Republican lawmakers face big town-hall demand during recess
For John Mihalka, the issues begin with the Affordable Care Act. Carla Meeske says she’s alarmed by environmental policies. And Dr. Michael Brennan is up in arms over potential rollbacks to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
What unites all of them is a common concern: They say their Republican members of Congress aren’t holding public events offering meaningful dialogue with voters like them.
This week, the first full week of recess for the current Congress, brought the issue of town halls into sharper focus.
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., faced hostile questions at an event in Sahuarita on Thursday. Other Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation largely avoided such confrontations by holding teleconferences or small meetings during the week.
In a statement on his Facebook page, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said town halls are being hijacked.
“These groups, who would drown out free speech by shouting through bullhorns, only want to disrupt and prevent Members of Congress from speaking with their constituents,” the statement said. “We will not be intimidated by such mindless tactics. We will continue to make ourselves available to our constituents through a number of avenues. We will move forward with previously planned events including tele-town halls, roundtables, and various other meetings to ensure our constituents are heard.”
The state’s four Democratic members of the House of Representatives also had a mix of public and private meetings, but these days it is Republicans who are facing widespread pressure, much of it stemming from President Donald Trump’s aggressive conservative agenda.
Meeske, a north Phoenix Democrat in U.S. Rep. David Schweikert’s district, said she had tried to find out when he planned a town hall. She learned from his staff on Wednesday that he had held a teleconference Monday night.
“I said, ‘I didn’t see it on the website.’ (The staffer) said they hadn’t gotten to posting it there but they did post it on the official Facebook page, not the personal one, which he uses the most,” Meeske, 59, said. “I said, ‘I hadn’t seen it.’ She said they had to take it down because of all the strong comments.”
Schweikert took questions in the teleconference, the first being a complaint from a woman who wanted to know why he was doing this on the phone. Schweikert told her it allowed him to reach 22,000 people at the same time. But Meeske was not one of them. “I was disappointed because I want to talk to him about his environmental agenda,” she said. “I’ve always paid attention, but I’ve never been active politically before.”
That’s one of the key signs of whether the Democratic-led protests will snowball into an effective elective force next year and beyond, said Edward Walker, an associate sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has researched social movements and protest groups.
“They are very much trying to learn the lessons of 2009,” Walker said, comparing new liberal-leaning groups like Indivisible to the “tea party” movement that helped sweep Republicans to power during the Obama years.
“The thing back then was the founding of tea-party chapters,” he said. “Those chapters actually became regular, meaningful ways of developing local civic and political engagement, such that people could be thinking of this as part of an ongoing campaign rather than just a short-term transaction.”
Mihalka, 65, joined his local Indivisible group, which had nearly 50 protesters Tuesday outside U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs’ Mesa office demanding a townhall meeting.
Early on in that event, no more than five members of the group identified themselves as Republicans or independents. The fact that so few in the group are Republicans in a district where GOP voters outnumber Democrats 2-to-1 suggests the Indivisible movement faces an uphill climb.
A spokesman for Biggs said he plans his second tele-town hall next week and will continue to meet with his constituents on a first-come, first-served basis.
“In this spirit of engagement, Congressman Biggs welcomes the chance to continue communicating and meeting with constituents and looks forward to a respectful dialogue with everyone involved,” Daniel Stefanski said.
As Indivisible picketed on Power Road in Mesa with signs ripping the Trump administration, some drivers honked, presumably as a sign of support, and at least one driver shouted angrily at the group. Most, however, gave no indication of how they viewed the burst of activism.
Mihalka, who received what he considers a life-saving operation from what is often called “Obamacare,” acknowledged a degree of futility, at least for now.
“We want a town hall,” he said. “We want to get in front of Andy Biggs, not that I think it will change anything.”
Still, Mihalka said his group is growing and isn’t especially impressed by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who also faces voters statewide next year.
“Jeff sometimes says nice things, but he never does anything,” Mihalka said.
Flake was the target of another Indivisible protest Thursday in Phoenix. Several dozen people, many carrying signs and chanting, demonstrated outside the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in northeast Phoenix calling on Flake to hold a town hall with constituents.
The protest was held outside the hotel where Flake was being honored at the 2017 Arizona Tourism Unity Dinner held by the Arizona Tourism and Lodging Association.
Brennan is a psychiatrist in the Superstition foothills who isn’t looking for a confrontation with his representative, Paul Gosar. Instead, he is an independent who would like to see Gosar, a dentist, listen more, starting with his insistence on doing away with the ACA.
“Rep. Gosar tries to conflate the idea that he’s an expert on medical issues just because he’s a dentist,” Brennan said, noting that he views his own expertise as largely limited to his own field.
Brennan said he worries Congress may trim benefits or push back eligibility for programs like Social Security and Medicare. He hoped to discuss those issues with Gosar when he looked into a public event scheduled for Thursday in Gold Canyon.
That event, originally billed as a “conversation” between Gosar and U.S. Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., turned into a tele-town hall.
“The problem was that we had hundreds of people who were not going to be able to attend Thursday’s event if we didn’t change it to a tele-town hall,” said Steven Smith, a Gosar spokesman. “The venue in Gold Canyon was simply too small. We are planning to hold future in-person town hall events throughout the year.”
The change happened as Brat was hounded in his own district on Tuesday. Protesters there blitzed Brat with complaints ranging from his efforts to repeal the ACA to his views on climate change.
The Washington Post noted some in the crowd made it clear they were unimpressed that he agreed to visit Arizona before scheduling a town hall in his own district.
Though the Gold Canyon event was a teleconference, Pam Betz, an independent who lives there, joined several dozen protesters outside Gosar’s offices to complain about a lack of access to him.
“I just think that was the chicken’s way out,” said Betz, who is worried that public lands will be sold, affecting animals, public access and the environment. “If he would meet with some of us, I would respect that . ... I don’t think the town hall would be as bad as he thinks.”
Two Democratic congressmen were the only members of the state’s delegation who appeared Wednesday at a health-care “listening session” put together by the Children’s Action Alliance. U.S. Reps. Ruben Gallego and Tom O’Halleran sat in on the event at Longview Elementary School in Phoenix, which featured several speakers outlining how the ACA had helped them or others. U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema sent a staffer.
With Gallego and O’Halleran both vowing to vote against any changes that would effectively destroy the coverage gains from the ACA, the event lacked the kind of pointed questions McSally fielded.