Staff and wire reports

ELKO, Nev. – Leaders of the Elko Tea Party say southern Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy will speak in Elko next month at a fundraiser and rally they’re co-hosting with the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood.

Bundy gained fame in April during a confrontation between the Bureau of Land Management and his armed supporters in a decades-old dispute over livestock grazing at his Bunkerville ranch.

The government eventually backed down and Bundy’s allies released the 380 cattle agents had seized.

Elko Tea Party co-chairwoman Lana Noland told the Elko Daily Free Press Bundy’s crusade underscores the importance of gun rights. Additional sponsors include Nevada Families for Freedom, Elko Independent American Party and the Constitutional Seminar Group.

Bundy told an Independent American Party gathering in Utah Aug. 2 his showdown was part of an age-old spiritual battle between good and evil.

“There was people from almost every state in this United States was there. Some of them told me they’d traveled for 40 hours to get there,” Bundy said in the common language of a man who has spent his life and livelihood in the Silver State’s desert climate. “Why did they come? … Because they felt like they needed to. They was spiritually touched.”

The socially conservative IAP encourages members to reject the Republican and Democratic Party’s “duopoly” and vote for candidates based on their individual qualifications rather than a party affiliation — especially outside Utah and New Mexico, the only states to formally recognize the IAP, and Arizona and Oregon, in which the IAP enjoys other-party affiliation.

The disagreement with federal officials over whether Bundy has a right to graze his cattle on “public” lands without paying government fees remained the focus of the summit’s finale, but much of the dialogue delved into spiritual influences.

The IAP draws much of its inspiration from statements made by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the majority of its members are LDS and Utah residents, although IAP National Chairman Kelly Gneiting said the party is not about doctrines specific to the Mormon religion or any other faith that believes in the biblical “providence of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

The LDS church does not endorse any political party, although its Utah members are heavily conservative and Republican.