Republican George Allen is courting the Tea Party in hopes that the powerful movement will help him get elected, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
 

After losing his Senate seat to Democrat Jim Webb in 2006, Allen has reinvented himself as a reformer who realized the error of his Washington establishment ways.
 

His new outlook is resonating with Tea Partiers. “If you study his record — and I have — I can say with conviction that George Allen was the tea party before there was a tea party,” said Daniel Cortex, an organizer of ‘Tea Party Patriots for George Allen.’