Republicans are fighting back against claims they are ducking constituents by not holding town hall meetings or refusing to attend ones organized by outside organizations.
Amid a flurry of bad press and videos of raucous encounters between Republican lawmakers and liberal-leaning voters back home during the first recess of the 115th Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Friday circulated a highlight reel of his rank-and-file members interacting with constituents and answering questions.
One of the featured members, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, is pushing back against critics back home who are upset he declined the invitation from liberal advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin to attend their town hall meeting. The town hall was organized by a Democrat who unsuccessfully sought his party’s nomination to challenge him last November.
That activist, Joel Lewis, told a local news station in his hometown of Wausau that Duffy’s tradition of holding one town hall per year in each of his district’s 26 counties was inadequate because the congressman first elected in 2010’s Tea Party wave does not give voters enough advanced notice.
“Most of us didn’t hear about till the day before or even day of, it’s hard when you’re a working family to make something like that,” he told Wausau’s ABC affiliate, WAOW.
Yet, after Duffy and Sen. Ron Johnson declined the group’s invitation, Citizen Action of Wisconsin changed the event’s location from the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County in Wausau to the Wausau Labor Temple with only a few hours’ notice.
“Congressman Duffy is one of the most accessible members of Congress, and has kept the promise he made to constituents when he was first elected in 2010 to hold an in-person town hall meeting in every one of the 26 counties in the seventh district every year that he serves, and he is proud to have kept that promise to Wisconsinites,” his spokesman Mark Bednar said.
