For America’s political establishment, Scott Brown’s victory in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts became a warning flare: The tea party was a force to be reckoned with.

For Larry Lynch, it was a personal awakening.

Mr. Lynch didn’t even live in Massachusetts. He was 1,100 miles away in Brunswick, Ga. A retired immigration enforcement agent, he had joined the Golden Isles Tea Party, he says, because “the government has gone too far” in spending and bailouts to big companies.

“All of us plain ol’ Joes who worked all of our life—we got what we got because we worked for it, not because it was a handout,” he says.

Mr. Lynch had never donated to a campaign or so much as put a bumper sticker on his car. But he sent $100 to Mr. Brown, hoping a victory in Massachusetts would make a statement to the nation. When Mr. Brown won, Mr. Lynch believed something in the country had shifted. Soon he had written checks to tea-party candidates in three other states.

“There was just this feeling of solidarity, that people are finally waking up,” he says. “It was this feeling that, ‘Yeah, we can make some changes. We can make a difference.'”

Whatever the result of Tuesday’s races, 2010 will be remembered as the year of the tea party. In part, that’s because of Mr. Lynch and the thousands like him who, in a time of national crisis, decided to throw themselves into politics. The movement, barely 12 months old at the start of the year, became the most dynamic political force of 2010.

Tea party-backed candidates didn’t win every race they entered during 2010—and undoubtedly won’t prevail in every race Tuesday. But in a spring and summer of surprises, they did displace at least a half-dozen long-time incumbents.

More broadly, the movement re-energized—and in some cases, scared—conservatives demoralized and dispirited in the aftermath of the Bush presidency and Obama victory. It brought dozens of new politicians to the fore, and redefined the debate on issues including health care and spending in a way that put Democrats on the defensive.

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(Read More: Wall Street Journal)