Trump resistance stages events, gets mixed reviews
Indivisible, others rally angry voters, but impact on lawmakers remains to be seen.
The burly white man with the sunglasses, VFW vest and baseball cap might have appeared to be an interloper when he arrived at Champion Park for the town hall meeting Wednesday evening organized by members of the local Trump resistance to confront a cardboard cutout of U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, for the congressman’s failure to challenge the new president.
But the baseball cap wasn’t Trump red but royal blue, and the inscription was not “Make America Great Again,” but “Make America Think Again,” and Mitch Fuller, a former Cedar Park City Council member, was there because he was rethinking his political affiliation.
“It’s hard to rationalize remaining a Republican when the guy at the top of the ticket is a complete joke,” Fuller said.
“I think Judge Carter is a good and decent man,” said Fuller, who has voted for Carter in the past. “He’s a staunch Republican. But senior elected Republicans have got to ask questions . ... There is a reckoning to come.”
But the five Republican members of Congress, who, along with Democrat Lloyd Doggett, represent parts of Austin, have reckoned that they could come back home for the Presidents Day district work period without holding any town hall meetings or showing up at the meetings set up by members of Indivisible, a national network formed to resist President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Paul Stekler, who makes political doc-
umentaries, said it might be good theater to berate a cardboard cutout of Carter in Champion Park, or of U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Austin, at a Mexican restaurant in Dripping Springs, or direct questions at the empty chair set out for U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, in a jampacked meeting room in Pflugerville, or at big milk containers bearing the “missing” images of Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn at the Spider House Ballroom in Central Austin.
But “until it has an electoral impact, it has no meaning,” said Stekler, a University of Texas professor of public affairs and chairman of UT’s Radio-Television-Film Department. “Show me something on Election Day.”
Or as Gina Hinojosa, a freshman Democratic state representative from Austin, told the more than 500 folks who filled Congregation Beth Israel on Thursday night for a town hall for constituents of U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, “Politicians always, always represent the people they believe got them into office. Always.”
The Republicans representing Austin won by large margins in November on the strength of GOP voters largely outside of Austin.
But the outpouring of energy — 240 people at Flores Mexican Restaurant in Dripping Springs and more turned away, 300 at Champion Park, 150 at the Blackhawk Amenity Center in Pflugerville, with many making their first foray into civic engagement and political activism — can’t help but be welcome news for Texas Democrats.
Spontaneous or choreographed?
They came even as a new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showed Trump’s support surging among Texas Republicans since the election, with 81 percent holding a favorable view of the new president to only 12 percent with an unfavorable opinion, offering GOP members of Congress every incentive to stay true to Trump.
Indeed, UT political scientist Daron Shaw, co-director of the poll, said that, if anything, all the anti-Trump tumult probably redounds to Trump’s benefit with his base.
Amid all the coverage this week of GOP members of Congress across the country facing boisterous and disapproving town hall crowds, Trump on Tuesday tweeted, “The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!”
On Thursday, Texas Republican Party Chairman Tom Mechler picked up on that theme in a fundraising email.
“Over the past several months, Democrats have shown that they are willing to do or say anything to create disruption and disorder. One of their latest tactics has been to advertise fake town hall events across the state ‘hosted’ by your local Representative,” wrote Mechler. “We can confirm that these events are indeed fake, and are being assembled by a liberal organization known as ‘Indivisible.’ This organization is an AstroTurf movement, created by former Democrat congressional staffers and funded by liberal activists, and will stop at nothing to disrupt President Trump’s conservative agenda.”
But members of Indivisible, which now has 5,387 verified groups, including at least two in every congressional district, say there is nothing fake about it.
“The fact is that no one from Indivisible has received a paycheck,” said Sarah Dohl, a former Doggett communications director who now serves in that role for the national Indivisible effort.
“What we’ve heard time and time again from the field is these are first-time ‘activists’— mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters — who up until very recently had never called their member of Congress before and certainly had never attended a town hall,” Dohl said.
Group therapy
At the Indivisible town halls in Central Texas (another event is happening Saturday evening for constituents of U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, at the Scoot Inn in East Austin), questioners identify themselves by name, ZIP code — all nine digits if possible — to prove they are genuine constituents, and often adding a personal disclaimer that they weren’t paid to be there.
It is group therapy — a mix of primal scream and group hug on the part of people for whom Trump’s victory wasn’t just another win for somebody they didn’t vote for but an existential threat to the future of the republic.
“Right now we’re having a collective hissy fit,” said Pranish Kantesaria of Cedar Park, who runs the pharmacy at a nearby rehabilitation hospital, at the Champion Park gathering.
“This is the first political event I’ve ever attended. Ever,” said Kantesaria. “I’m normally not a particularly political person. But my wife’s an immigrant. My parents were immigrants, and I want to be able to ask my representative questions.”
Until a formidable, wellfunded candidate challenges Carter, Kantesaria, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but for Mitt Romney in 2012, said, “I don’t think anything is going to change here. But it feels good to be around people I know don’t hate me.”
While the five Republicans who represent slices of Austin wouldn’t appear at all vulnerable in 2018, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has its sights set on U.S. Reps. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, and John Culberson, R-Houston, who represent districts in which Clinton narrowly defeated Trump.
Ricardo Guerrero, one of the organizers of the Pflugerville town hall, said Democrats are looking at trying to win state House seats in hopes of altering the balance of power in Texas before the 2020 congressional redistricting.
Ten Republicans in the Texas House and one Republican in the Texas Senate represent districts that Trump lost to Clinton, according to data from the Texas Legislative Council.
Doggett deja vu
While McCaul didn’t show up at the Central Austin town hall in his honor, even as it was underway he could be seen on the PBS “NewsHour” show striking a conciliatory tone about the gathering and others like it.
“This is what democracy is all about,” said McCaul, who won re-election in 2016 by 19 points in a district that Romney carried in 2012 by 20 points, but where Trump beat Clinton by only 9 points.
“I’m planning to hold what’s called a telephone town hall, where we have greater bandwidth, and I will be able to reach probably 40,000 to 50,000 of my constituents throughout my district in effective sort of media technology,” McCaul said.
Of Trump’s criticism of the “so-called angry crowds,” McCaul said, “We had the tea party that were activists. And now we’re seeing this sort of liberal phenomenon of activists that are speaking out.”
“And they have every right to do so,” McCaul said.
But Doggett said the Republicans, in their gerrymandered districts, “feel that they can safely refuse to face those from whom they are taking away health care. They refuse to explain their inexplicable support of Trump’s radical and erratic behavior. The next step for the angry across America is to focus on securing more responsive representatives.”
Eight years ago it was Doggett facing a boisterous crowd of 200, upset about health care reform, in the parking lot at a Randalls store in Southwest Austin. At the time, he had doubted their authenticity.
“There was nothing grass roots or unorganized about this,” Doggett said at the time. “This wasn’t just people in Southwest Austin responding to the fact that I was there. I would defend their right to protest anything I am for. What I don’t defend, and what I did find to be very unsatisfactory, is the notion that they would deny other people the right to be heard.”