Tea Party members gathered Saturday at City Park in Vicksburg carrying a message of cultural conservatism and hopes of big wins for conservative candidates in this fall’s congressional midterm elections nationwide.

Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and Republican congressional candidate Bill Marcy, their speeches interspersed with musical acts, sounded themes geared toward a GOP takeover of Congress when voters head to the polls Nov. 2.

Marcy, a crowd favorite among tea party organizations in Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, defended his candidacy in the Delta-based district held by 17-year incumbent U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson against perceptions of being an outsider to the area. The 64-year-old former Chicago cop moved to Warren County in August from Meridian.

“I’m as much Mississippi as Mississippi is!” said Marcy, whose family’s roots are in the eastern part of the state. Marcy kept up attacks against the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama, promoting the idea of “seizing control of Washington, and not just saying ‘no,’ but saying ‘hell no’.”

Bryant, an oft-mentioned hopeful for governor in 2011, spoke last to a crowd that dwindled to about 85 from more than 200 at midday. He cast fiscal responsibility and recognizing the United States as “a Christian nation.” He implored tea partiers to vote in November.

A handful of local and state officials also appeared either to speak or introduce speakers, including state Rep. Alex Monsour, State Treasurer Tate Reeves, Commissioner of Insurance Mike Chaney and state Sen. W. Briggs Hopson III.

Comments by the event’s other speakers ranged from Kosciusko sixth-grader Austin Roebuck’s call to encourage youth involvement in the civic process to strident tones on morality by Mississippi-born former actor Tom Lester.

“To work together, your generation and mine must meet in the middle,” said Roebuck, 12, chairman of the Mississippi Youth Patriotism Campaign.

Lester, who acted on TV’s “Green Acres” from 1965-71, excoriated modern-day pop culture on economic and social issues — ticking off a number of things society had replaced, including “the Constitution with secular government,” “abstinence with safe sex” and “normal heterosexuality with abnormal, virgin homosexuality.”

Formed in the spring of 2009, the group’s protests to government spending and taxes have spread to outward support of specific candidates in many states. High-profile U.S. Senate primaries in Nevada, Kentucky and, most recently, Delaware, have produced defeats of GOP establishment candidates by those backed by the movement.

Saturday’s county fair-styled event, organized by Vicksburg Tea Party and 912 Vicksburg Inc., will be followed up by billboard advertising, said Betty Stout of the taxed enough already movement.

“It was important to do this in Vicksburg,” Stout said. “We need to wake up.”

Amy Matthews of Crystal Springs was one of several who brought their dogs to the rally, lined by rows of lawn chairs under the roof of City Park pavilion. Her short-haired collie, Abbie, sported a sign that read “Will crash a White House party for food.”

“I’m here because of the direction of the country,” Matthews said. “Democrats as well as Republicans want to take the country in a way that people are saying, ‘Wait, that’s not what we thought we were getting.’”

Fliers announcing the event said the Vicksburg organization is a 501(c)(4), tax exempt nonprofit corporation. Unlike 501(c)(3) organizations, they may take part in political campaigns and elections as long as the campaigns don’t become the group’s primary purpose.