‘Do your job!’: Rowdy Republican town halls a sign of things to come

Garance Franke-Ruta
·Senior Politics Editor

The town hall meeting held by House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz in a Salt Lake City suburb Thursday night was raucous, packed — and a sign of things to come.

The meeting had to be moved to accommodate the crowd, and still hundreds of people couldn’t get in, waiting outside it and chanting, “Your last term!” after it was over. The Salt Lake County GOP knew it was going to be packed and urged its members Tuesday to turn out to counter an expected wave of angry resistance movement attendees. It didn’t make any difference.

The room in Cottonwood Heights held more than 1,000 and was quickly filled.

Attendees chanted “Let them in!” when the doors were shut, and “Do your job!” after Chaffetz, a Republican who represents Utah’s third congressional district, was pressed on why he was not conducting oversight into the Trump administration with the same vigor with which he’d pursued Hillary Clinton.

After the Women’s March on Washington and its sister marches around the country turned into the largest street protests in American history, and after a robust array of groups helped drive the calls that led to the busiest three days in Capitol switchboard history, the progressive anti-Trump movement that’s loosely organized under the banner of “the resistance” has a third target in sight: congressional town halls.

In fact, just as the confrontational Chaffetz town hall was getting started, an online video training about how to put members of Congress on the spot at town halls was winding down. The founders of the postelection group Indivisible — which aims to build a progressive version of the tea party movement — and the representatives from Organizing for Action — the advocacy group that grew out of the 2008 Obama for America campaign — had come together to teach a new generation of progressives spurred to action by Trump the fine art of putting the screws to their members of Congress during the upcoming congressional recess, which begins on Feb. 20.

Their three main messages: Organize and show up. Your member of Congress works for you. And, critically, the old Internet dictum: “Pics or it didn’t happen.”

Trainer Angel Padilla of Indivisible advised going to meetings and town halls with a group and “make sure you record, record as much as you can.” That means during the meeting, before the meeting and after the meeting, too — especially if filming is shut down during the meeting. “When you get a good interaction with a member, it can really get amplified when it’s caught on video,” he said. “Go in a group. It’s easier to ignore one person.”

It’s not just publicly advertised town halls that are on the district recess agenda. Activists interested in preserving the Affordable Care Act are being urged to request town halls, too, as well as district meetings with senior staff. And they are being urged to show up at all public district events, from ribbon-cuttings to walkabouts to office hours.

Already they are coming up with creative approaches. “For Resist Trump Tuesday office visits we use a ‘Donuts with Dialogue’ model. We take donuts for staffers and target specific issues & tell stories. Each time, we have been met with respect and staffers take notes,” wrote Grace Haynes in the group chat accompanying the video call.

“Austin TX, people here are meeting every single Tuesday at lunch at John Cornyn’s office bc phone lines don’t work,” added Kristy Sprott.

The current efflorescence of activism is so intense that it comes with the risk of overloading the system and causing members to shut out even voices they might want to be listening to. “I’m in a red district and one of my MOCs has been complaining about being bombarded by individuals outside of the state. I’ve noticed that his people have stopped asking for my zip code when I call. Thinking that my calls are now being discredited be/c they are getting so many out of district,” wrote one watcher during the OFA-Indivisible training.

That explains the emphasis on in-person, in-district action. The entire premise of Indivisible is that members of Congress — and especially members of the House, who face voters every two years — care first and foremost about reelection, and thus about anyone who can help or hurt on that front, regardless of broader national currents of public opinion. “Constituents are really important to members of Congress, and other people are not. If you’re not a member of Congress’ constituent, they don’t care what you think,” explained Matt Traldi, one of the leaders of Indivisible, during the video call. He said that after study of the tea party, which came into power when Obama had a supermajority on Congress and was enormously popular and still managed to significantly slow his agenda, or even block it, he believed that progressives could be even more effective in light of the new president’s unpopularity. “Trump’s agenda is not just a bad one, it’s also very unpopular. If we stick to the facts … we can win,” he said.

But that requires the same single-minded focus that characterized the tea party in 2009-2011. The tea party “focused on saying no to the president’s agenda,” he said. “We should absolutely replicate that right now.”

Donald Aguirre is just the sort of person the national organizers are counting on. A Utahan with what he described as “an office job” at a communications company, he co-founded Utah Indivisible along with two fellow millennials, sisters who work as a nurse and a 911 dispatcher. The group is one of three local Indivisible groups that turned out at the Chaffetz town hall. It’s so new it just held its first protest, organized online in opposition to the confirmation of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and has yet to hold its first in-person meeting. The group has drawn Democrats, Republicans and libertarians, Aguirre said. He estimated that, all told, the three Indivisible groups combined had turned out maybe 100 people to the town hall. Others came representing other groups. But many came on their own.

CNN reported from the scene that most of those at the town hall were attending one for the first time in their lives.

“Even though we had members of Congress and senators that denounced the words that Donald Trump was saying, they condemned his actions, like that video of him talking about grabbing ladies, it’s too much hypocrisy with people saying they stand for something, then they don’t. We got sick and tired of members of Congress not really representing us but toeing the party line,” said Aguirre. He livestreamed the town hall on Facebook to the group. (You can watch the full Chaffetz town hall, as recorded by Aguirre, here.)

Indivisble, OFA and other activist groups such as MoveOn have also been holding twice-a-week calls to compare notes and catalog all the events Republicans are having in their districts, with the goal of fostering a massive mobilization at the local level to have an impact in a strategic way. Among the new groups they’ve been relying on in this process is the Town Hall Project 2018.

Co-founded by Nathan Williams, a political field organizer who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign and in 2016 helped turn out voters in Las Vegas for the League of Conservation Voters, and by Clinton 2016 campaign field organizer Jimmy Dahman, the all-volunteer group saw an opening after the election to give people the tools they needed to continue expressing themselves to their representatives, Williams said. They snagged an off-the-shelf interface to promote a simple concept: A Google document with a complete list of upcoming congressional town hall meetings, launching the Town Hall Project 2018 with the help of volunteer labor from dozens of Democratic field organizers in their network. Many of them were, like Williams, unemployed after the end of the 2016 campaign. Now that guide is being used by Indivisible and other groups.

Planned Parenthood also has been actively rallying members to confront members of Congress at town halls, holding a series of forums across the country in communities beyond the big cities. That paid off in a big way Thursday night in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where Rep. Diane Black, a conservative Republican who wants to roll back Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood, was confronted by women wearing or carrying the group’s logo.

Her town hall on Obamacare was so swamped that a woman from the back of the crowd that was trying to get in cried out, “If you want to represent us, let us in!”

Chaffetz was also confronted by a Planned Parenthood patient Thursday. The national organization sent video of the confrontation to reporters Friday, in case they’d missed it.

The woman stood to testify that when she found herself at high risk for cervical cancer as a single mother of three with no health insurance, she relied on Planned Parenthood for her annual screening tests. “Sir, can you please tell me, can you explain to me why you are trying to take that vital health provider away from women like me?” she asked.

Chaffetz replied with a story about his mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 30s, then drew murmurs of outrage when it seemed like he might be avoiding a direct answer and moving into a story about his wife. He shushed the crowd. “I want her to know that I care about this, and I care deeply and I care personally,” he said, seeking to address the questioner directly. His further answer — “My concern is to give that organization federal taxpayer dollars when we have so many in our community that disagree with that,” and that he thought there would be “a better use of the money” — drew deep boos and shouts from the audience.

In Tennessee, a woman from Black’s district who described herself as a Christian spoke up feelingly for the ACA as “the healthy people pull up the sick.”

“I HAVE to have coverage in order to make sure that I don’t die,” said Mike Carlson, a 32-year-old student from Antioch, Tenn., according to CNN.

But the anger wasn’t all about ACA and Planned Parenthood. At Chaffetz’s town hall, constituents spoke up about tribal sovereignty and the Bears Ears National Monument, which was designated by President Obama and which Chaffetz opposes. A 6-year-old girl spoke up on behalf of science. And a former teacher drew cheers when she asked Chaffetz, “What is your line in the sand” when it comes to impeaching President Trump.

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