Questioner thrown out of Toomey meeting to be charged

Man asked about senator’s daughter

A Northampton County man removed from Sen. Pat Toomey’s town hall meeting after he asked the Republican about reports that Mr. Toomey’s daughter had been kidnapped said Friday that he was disappointed to learn that police intend to charge him.

For Simon Radecki, 28, of Northampton, the decision to charge him represents “a startling reminder of what it’s like to live in the United States, or least Pennsylvania, nowadays, where someone can literally be arrested and taken into custody for asking a pointed question.”

Others found Mr. Radecki’s question startling.

DaWayne Cleckley, vice president of marketing for PBS39, which hosted Thursday’s town hall in Bethlehem, called Mr. Radecki’s question inappropriate and said he preferred the approach taken by some protesters outside, who stood peacefully and occasionally marched.

“I think that speaks to the type of dialogue that we want to procure in our community, where people can really express themselves thoughtfully and meaningfully, but it has to be civil, especially now, when we are in the time period we’re living [in] where our nation is so divided.”

The Bethlehem Police Department on Friday said it intends to charge Mr. Radecki with disorderly conduct and disrupting a public meeting. They said he will receive a summons in the mail on those charges but did not indicate whether he would face misdemeanor or summary counts.

The decision highlights an ongoing national debate about what counts as free speech at a time when some argue political discourse in the nation is at an alltime low.

Mr. Toomey’s town hall meeting — his first in-person public meeting in months — had a highly

structured format. Nearly 400 people submitted questions they wanted to ask the Republican senator. A group of local journalists and academics worked together to weed through the questions and select which ones would be asked during the hourlong session, which was broadcast live.

When Mr. Radecki’s turn came about 40 minutes in, he said he chose to go off script and ask a different question than the one he had originally submitted.

He began by thanking the senator for his time and acknowledged they had been gathered there “for a while.”

“You probably haven’t seen the news,” he said, according to video of the event. “Can you confirm whether or not your daughter Bridget has been kidnapped?”

“Uh,” the senator responded.

“The reason I ask is because that’s the reality of families,” Mr. Radecki said before his words trailed off and people pulled him offstage and out of view of the studio audience.

“That’s, that’s a ridiculous question,” the senator said.

A moderator then moved on to the next question, and the rest of the meeting continued without incident.

Mr. Radecki said in a telephone interview Friday that the rest of his question would have asked the senator about his plans for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, which offers protection to some young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States to work or study when they were children. President Donald Trump has said he would like to scrap DACA, potentially making thousands of young immigrants eligible for deportation.

A spokesman for Mr. Toomey declined to comment Friday, beyond reiterating the senator’s comment Thursday night that he thought Mr. Radecki’s statement was ridiculous.

Mr. Toomey told reporters after the town hall meeting Thursday that he believes the children covered by DACA were a “very sympathetic population.” He said he objected to DACA because he thought that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, did not have legal authority to decide not to enforce “a whole category of the law.”

The senator said he would like to see legislation to address DACA but did not offer many specifics.

“We should do it at a time when we’re also addressing other challenges in immigration, like making sure we have border security, making sure that we’re not looking the other way when employers illegally hire people, but it’s a sympathetic group of people and we should find a way to deal with them.”