Nationally, Democrats say they intend to campaign against the tea party movement. But locally, Democratic officials and activists in at least four states now stand accused of collaborating with tea party candidates in an attempt to sabotage Republican challengers in some of the closest House races in the nation.

The charges of dirty tricks are being leveled in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida — and they involve more than a half-dozen contests that could tip the balance of power in the House.

In all of the affected races, the outcome is expected to be close enough that a third-party candidate who wins just a few percentage points could end up swinging the outcome to the Democratic congressman or candidate.

“The Democrats have come to the realization that they can’t win on issues, and with their flawed candidates, so they are forced to skirt the rules by running candidates who they hope can split the vote with Republicans,” said Paul Lindsey, a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman.

Democratic officials deny there is any grand conspiracy.

"The DCCC has nothing to do with this," said Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the evidence of campaign tampering in at least two states is hard to dismiss. In Michigan, the party chairman in suburban Detroit’s Oakland County now concedes that one of his top aides played a role in helping nine tea party candidates get onto the ballot for various offices across the state — including the open 1st Congressional District and the 7th Congressional District, held by vulnerable freshman Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer.

“We have to assess internally what we do next,” Democratic Chairman Mike McGuinness told the Detroit News.

“We need to make sure staff is operating within the bounds of our purview, which is helping the Democratic Party.” McGuinness did not return requests for comment from POLITICO.

Recruitment of so-called straw candidates or spoilers is a time-honored, if less than reputable, tradition in American politics. But in this case, some Democrats appear to be in cahoots with ideological adversaries whose ideas they hope to use as weapons against Republicans in the fall.

Now, seven House seats are the subject of controversies that are spawning threats of lawsuits and criminal complaints and even pitting conservative tea party activists against one another.

One of those activists is Jim Schneller, who is running to fill the suburban Philadelphia-based seat left vacant by Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

The seat is among the Republicans’ top targets this fall, and the contest between Democratic state Rep. Bryan Lentz and Republican Pat Meehan is viewed as a tossup. The entry of a third- party candidate, however, could scramble that balance — which prompted Meehan’s campaign to scrutinize Schneller’s credentials.

According to its analysis, 3,800 of the 4,200 voter signatures gathered to put Schneller on the ballot were collected by Democrats. And among those who helped the tea party candidate are Colleen Guiney, the chairwoman of the Swarthmore Democratic Party and a Lentz supporter, and Nicholas Allred, who works for the Swarthmore College Democrats.

Bryan Kendro, Meehan’s campaign manager, accused Lentz’s backers of trying to “split the conservative vote by using Jim Schneller as nothing more than a prop.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Schneller said he’s been disappointed by the Republican assault on his legitimacy. “My signatures were gathered by volunteers,” said Schneller. “We didn’t go around screening signatures or signors.”

Schneller, who once filed a lawsuit to force President Obama to present his birth certificate, said he jumped into the race because he believes he can win it.

“Being someone who believes in the American system, it was difficult to hear people say that I was conniving or actually colluding or even show some disdain for the fact that the vote [margin] could be changed by my candidacy,” he said.

Yet after the POLITICO interview, a reporter with PoliticsPA presented the Meehan evidence to Schneller, and he took a different tone, calling it “dreadful. I regret that there might be some appearance of badness either to me or the Democrats.”

The secretary of state still must certify the Schneller petitions, and a Meehan spokesman said the campaign is still mulling a challenge.

Challenges already are being lodged against some of the 23 candidates running as part of the newly minted Tea Party of Michigan.

Even before the candidate roster was released last month, the suspicions of tea party activists had been aroused when they learned that the founding father of the new state party is Mark Steffek, a retired United Auto Workers steward.

Among the candidates under scrutiny now are two currently vying for House seats.

One is Danny Davis, a former soldier and police officer, who is running in a race that features a rematch between Schauer and Tim Walberg, the former GOP congressman he defeated in 2008 by just 7,432 votes — one of the closest races in the nation that year.

The Michigan Tea Party’s other House candidate is Lonny Lee Snyder, who is running for the Republican-leaning district of retiring Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak, whose vote in support of health care reform angered his base and prompted his retirement.

The race to succeed him is expected to be tight, which means Snyder’s third-party candidacy could have an impact. But there is scant information about the elusive candidate.

Snyder doesn’t have a website, the Tea Party headquarters didn’t release biographical information about his candidacy, and grass-roots tea party activists say they have never heard of him. When POLITICO called his home number, a man who answered said Snyder wasn’t home.

The mystery surrounding Snyder and other Michigan Tea Party candidates prompted some conservatives to do some digging. Jason Gillman, a local blogger with campaign experience, requested copies from state election officials of the “Affidavit of Identity” of all 23 candidates nominated by the new Tea Party.

As he perused them, Gillman noticed that nine of the affidavits were notarized by a person named Jason Bauer. When Gillman searched the name on the Internet, he discovered that Bauer worked for the Oakland County Democratic Party — information he quickly disseminated to the local news media and the conservative think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

As questions mushroomed, Steffek, the retired UAW steward, gave an interview to the local media, asserting that his new party and candidates are legitimate and his intentions pure. He said he joined the Tea Party ranks because of his disgust with big government and opposition to free-trade agreements.

Gillman isn’t buying it.

“They are the Toledo Mud Hens of the Democratic Party,” he said, in reference to the Detroit Tigers’ minor league baseball team. “He is not legitimate. He has absolutely nothing to do with the legitimate tea party groups.”

But in an interview with POLITICO, Davis, the designated Tea Party candidate in the Schauer-Walberg rematch, insisted it’s actually the tea party activists who have been compromised.

For months, Davis, who originally filed to run in March as an independent, has been denied a chance to appear before tea party meetings or engage in their candidate debates, he said.

“They censured conservatives in favor of Republicans,” he said. “It really seemed they’d become an extension of the GOP and they were going to push a Republican candidate no matter what. They were scared to death of somebody who might split the vote.”

Vote splitting is a worry shared by conservatives in New Jersey, where the surprising elevation of a third-party candidate could influence the outcome of the tough reelection race of Democratic freshman Rep. John Adler against Republican Jon Runyan.

Runyan’s aides began looking into the background of New Jersey tea party candidate Peter DeStefano after Adler’s campaign released an internal poll that showed DeStefano drawing 12 percent of the vote. Local conservatives were also miffed that most of DeStefano’s conservative firepower seemed unusually directed toward Runyan, rather than the Democrat Adler.

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