Tea Partier Challenges Senator Snowe

Moderate Maine Republican Olympia Snowe has a Tea Party challenger: Andrew Ian Dodge, the second candidate to challenge the vulnerable Snowe in the 2012 GOP primary. Despite his Tea Party bona fides—he's the Maine coordinator for Tea Party Patriots—Dodge isn't your typical tricorn-wearing Tea Partier. Goateed with long gray hair, he dresses all in black; he wrote a trilogy of self-published cyberpunk novels; and he's abstaining from social issues in favor of economic ones. He says gay marriage should be left to states to decide, and he claims he tries not to think about abortion. "I'm not a woman, so I dare not tell a woman what to do with her body," but "I'm not pro-choice either if that's possible in this day and age. It's something I don't think about." Nor does he like Glenn Beck, saying his 9/12 project is too close to evangelical Christianity. Snowe has been unpopular with the Tea Party since she voted for TARP and the stimulus.