Palin’s Saturday Speech Still On, Tea Party Founder Says
ABC News’ Sheila Marikar and Shushannah Walshe report:
Sarah Palin has not canceled her keynote speech for the Tea Party of America’s Saturday rally in Indianola, Iowa, according to the event’s organizers.
Ken Crow, the founder of the Tea Party of America, told ABC News this morning that he “hung up with [Palin's] people five minutes ago” and “she’ll be here on Saturday.”
“Gov. Palin is a lady of her word and impeccably honest,” he added. He admitted that the organization’s encountered “a couple of errors” in planning the Sept. 3 rally.
“I’m naive when it comes to politics and what you are supposed to say to and not say and my crew and I are rookies at this sort of thing,” he said. “We made mistakes and now we are fixing them. It’s all good.”
Multiple media outlets reported this morning that Palin had backed out of the “Restoring America” event, but still planned to be in Iowa on Saturday. The rally’s undergone a lot of upheaval this week: Failed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was invited to speak before Palin, then had the invitation rescinded, and on Tuesday night, “humbly re-accepted the re-invitation” to speak, according to her Twitter account.
Crow called the handling of O’Donnell a “mistake.”
“I didn’t handle it the way I should have,” he said. “We handled it incorrectly.”
Palin seemed locked into giving the keynote speech earlier this month when her political action committee put out a Web video of her recent appearance at the Iowa State Fair that ended with the words, “See You Again September 3rd.”
The former governor of Alaska is also slated to appear at a T ea Party rally in New Hampshire on Monday, Sept. 5.