Two Nashville-based entrepreneurs are cashing in on the national Tea Party movement by doing the bidding of their corporate kingpins.

Eric Odom and Alan Fuller founded two firms, Strategic Activism and Flat Creek Management, to provide strategic communications and on-line training for Tea Party activists.

“Tea Party demonstrators have been receiving how-to-disrupt packets from organizers like Odom and Fuller, who get paid to stop legislation opposed by their corporate benefactors,” Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Chip Forrester said.

“People need to stop for a moment and consider who organizes these events and the origins of this movement. It’s beginning to look more and more like corporate interests are fueling the Tea Party movement.”

Forrester pointed out that three other local Tea Party organizers have checkered pasts. Williamson County Republican Michael Patrick Leahy and Murfreesboro resident Christian Hidalgo have federal and state tax liens filed against them while Nashville resident Tom Kovach was fired from his job at Whites Creek High School in 2007 for assaulting a student.

Odom and Fuller also run the American Liberty Alliance, which promotes itself as a national network of grassroots activists who promote and defend the cause of individual liberty, free market principles and limited government.

Fuller is originally from Nashville and went to high school at MBA. He is a former press secretary for former Congressman Bob Beauprez of Colorado and also served as the press secretary for Tennessee state Sen. Mark Norris’ failed congressional bid in 2002.

Both Odom and Fuller have worked with former Congressman Dick Armey and Freedom Works to kill energy regulation. Freedom Works is another conservative organization touting grassroots activism. It is at the center of the current health-care debate.

Armey has taken millions of dollars as a lobbyist for big oil, pharmaceutical companies, health-care companies and the insurance industry, all of which have a vested interest in health care or energy reform.

“People are being duped into thinking the government is going to take over health care here in America,” Forrester said. “That’s not the case.

“Tens of millions of Americans are without health insurance, and every day more people are priced out of the system or denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Huge amounts of money are being spent to lobby against health-care and insurance reform.

“The health of millions of Americans, meanwhile, is put in jeopardy every day when an insurance company refuses to pay for a medical procedure or someone puts off treatment or buying medicine because they cannot afford it,” he added.