Lawmakers from both parties are largely avoiding any town hall meetings with constituents during their 11-day recess that starts Friday, after Republicans in particular have had run-ins with rowdy voters protesting the Trump administration and efforts in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare.
According to the Town Hall Project, only two Republicans are slated to hold town halls during the recess — Darrell Issa of California on June 3 and Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin on June 4. Over the same period, only four Democratic lawmakers are holding similar meetings, but Republicans, in particular, have been more likely targets of angry voters.
While the vast majority of members are avoiding traditional town halls, they are using other ways to stay in touch with constituents. In some cases, that includes holding tele-town hall meetings, which have become more popular since Trump took office.
“There’s lots of ways to stay in touch with your constituents,” said Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, who chairs the National Republican Campaign Committee. He said it’s a “false narrative” to say that not doing live town halls means lawmakers are not staying in touch with their constituents.
“In my district, it takes four hours to get from one side to the other. It’s way more convenient to be on the phone,” Stivers said. He said he usually gets between 7,000 and 9,000 people on those calls.
“I think this narrative that it has to be a live town hall is artificial and antiquated because technology allows us to stay in touch with our constituents so many ways,” said Stivers, who does most of his in-person town halls during the month-long August recess.
Throughout the past few months, healthcare has been a major topic at town halls nationwide. The upcoming recess will take place just after the Congressional Budget Office scored the latest iteration of the American Health Care Act the House passed three weeks ago and predicts that 23 million more people will be uninsured under that bill over the next decade.
Calls for town halls have increased since Trump took office in January and have become raucous affairs, especially since Republicans introduced and passed the AHCA.
Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., is one of the more recent Republicans to hold a town hall meeting, and he did so only five days after the AHCA passed. He said at the time that House leadership has not told them whether they should or shouldn’t hold them and that each member should decide whether to hold them on their own.
“They don’t really weigh in one way or another. I ran as being accessible … I’m trying to be accessible, but I want to have an exchange of ideas,” Brat said, adding later on that members should decide on their own whether to hold town halls. “That’s up to them. They know their constituents; they know their district.”
One day after Brat held one of these meetings, Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., one of the key centrist negotiators who helped pass the healthcare bill, held a marathon five-hour meeting in Democrat-heavy Willingboro, where he defended his work on the bill and dealt with lectures and interruptions from attendees.
That kind of experience has led many members to forgo the opportunity to be targeted and favor of other ways to meet with constituents — including the tele-town hall.
“The telephone-town halls are working great, and we’ve done more than I’ve ever done in just the first five months alone,” he said.
