Strib, local content, here. Not a wire service carry. In part:
WASHINGTON – It’s been years since U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen held a town hall meeting, in a hall, in a town in his district. Instead, every few weeks or months, he phones home.
[...] Anyone with questions for their congressman, he said, could hit *3 and hold, please.
Using numbers provided by an outside contractor, Paulsen’s office dials as many as 50,000 households in his district at a time. Anyone who picks up the phone is given an invitation, a conference call code and a toll-free number to call within the next hour. The calls cycle among communities in the Third District, an affluent suburban crescent wrapped around the western Twin Cities metro. [...]
Many members of Congress have grown wary of town halls, where they risk on-camera confrontations with angry constituents, [...]
Their Minnesota GOP colleague, Rep. Tom Emmer, held a high-profile town hall in Stearns County in February 2017 but has held nothing like it since, though Emmer did frequently hold town halls around his district in 2015 and 2016.
Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota have held such gatherings more frequently since the beginning of 2017, though some adopt different formats. Some, like Reps. Rick Nolan and Keith Ellison, have convened issue-specific forums. [...]
Last year, the Washington Post estimated that just 40 percent of congressional Democrats and 18 percent of Republicans held town halls during the long August recess, and those who did sometimes encountered atmospheres more like protest rallies than community forums.
But Paulsen’s refusal to hold a traditional town hall has been a source of intense frustration for some critics in his district, one of just a few Republican-held congressional districts in the nation that Hillary Clinton carried. Protesters have picketed on bridges with lighted “Town Hall Now” signs and staged a town hall of their own with hundreds of people in the audience but no congressman at the podium. The group Indivisible MN03 collects, transcribes and posts Paulsen “robocalls” on YouTube.
“The calls come entirely by surprise,” said Bunday, a longtime Republican who voted for Paulsen in every election until 2016, when he broke from the party over Donald Trump. “We’d really like to have a meeting with Rep. Paulsen — we’re talking an in-person town hall. An actual town hall.”
Mia Olson of Bloomington picked up the ringing phone by chance — nothing on the caller ID, she said, indicated that it was an incoming call from a congressional office. She dialed in to the call, punched in the code she’d been given and hit *3 to ask her question. At the end of the call, Paulsen told those still waiting to stay on the line. They would be sent to a voice mailbox, he said, and either he or a staffer would get back to them.
“I waited on the line for 45 minutes and was disconnected,” she said. “I would like him to look me in the eyes and answer the question.”
How is that for a thank-you-and-vote-me-again-you-mean-so-much? Like a middle finger salute, or not? Voters, please disinfect both Congressional seats. Vote in new faces, new ideas, and let that pair figure whehter they've each a fully vested federal pension, or not.
Robocalls are for robots. Are you one? Or a human expecting interaction and respect?
UPDATE: To a major extent, Lewis skates. Paulsen gets the brunt of "coverage," while there is little cause to excuse Lewis, or to presume his robocalls somehow are purer. Voters - disinfect both seats. Put in new faces and let that pair robo on down the road. The term "public servant" has not lost its meaning, it only is ignored by those having more chutzpah than good sense.
___________RAW UPDATE___________
What is raw, the town hall snub, years of town hall no shows; callous robo-humbug treatment to district voters; but in town in tow to the Pence of The United States for a smiling dog and pony extravaganza.
If registered in advance you have the opportunity to attend the convention center for a propaganda fest; spiel delivered with schmaltz, the same Tax Cut to Put America First propaganda spieled nationwide, on tour like a rock band, but of course not entailing any two-way interaction whatsoever --- except for the big wallet old suburban white guys showing up for the day-earlier fundraiser.
Strib-
Vice President Mike Pence is spending a night in Minnesota where he will raise money for Republicans ahead of a Wednesday morning rally in Minneapolis aimed at spreading the GOP’s campaign message.
“On our way to talk about the Trump tax cuts: The American economy is booming under @POTUS Trump — and we’re just getting started,” Pence said on Twitter en route from North Dakota, where he appeared on Tuesday.
Pence was scheduled to arrive around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday and travel to a fundraiser in Golden Valley, which was not open to the press.
Pence will deliver remarks Wednesday morning at an event called “Tax Cuts to Put America First,” at the Minneapolis Convention Center at 9:30. Republican U.S. Reps. Erik Paulsen, Tom Emmer and Jason Lewis were scheduled to participate.
[...] They are also likely to enjoy a campaign cash advantage that Pence will add to during his time here.
[emphasis added]
Get that. Go figure.
Just think, at that dog-and-pony convention-center touring show they might even shoot "Great Again" caps from an air cannon; or a few "America First" tee shirts that way, with a vending stand in the lobby for those not getting one of the seven sealed and air cannon delivered crowd giveaways.
Reasonably priced at the vending stand, say perhaps nineteen-fifty for the tee shirt; twenty-seven bucks for the cap, and to take a selfie - you and your Rep, two hundred bucks, with Pence, five hundred.
They are Republicans. Business before pleasure. Before the pleasure of voter interaction at a festive town hall show-up, at a venue absent vending booths and canned spiel, town hall questions taken. Business keeps them in DC, unfortunately, except for a little dog/pony shakedown stuff - fund raising in the 'burbs - with the Veep, lead singer. But town halls? Too busy.
And the day after the tour hit and lit up the convention center, Your Rep, just like Pence, he's gone.
There you are, left with your tie-dyed Tax Cut to Put America First Tour tee shirt, a memory, your ticket stub. You can frame it.
FURTHER: Thinking about this post, earlier, two links were there which as best as I know do not apply. One more than the other should not have been posted, both have been removed. They were to songs I enjoy, but the lyrics of one suggested language exceeding disagreement with their tax policy and actions, who it was passed to benefit, and the criticism remains over how they robo-townhall because it is not the work of going into the district to face people and questions. It is staying insular while only really talking to other beltway types, staff and officials, and getting too narrow and wrong a feedback. Then, they come like rock stars for a one day thing, which is propaganda, and move back. It is not dishonest, but disdainful. That said, the music links arguably went beyond that complaint.
So, in killing the links the last update has been edited at a place or two, but still calling the pattern raw, that stays.
FURTHER: It is touring just as Dead and Company do touring and as Grateful Dead did before them. The tour organizer controls entry to the venue and you cannot get in without them, and look at the evidence - the tout of the tour:
They even call it a tour. One day and done. Barnum and Bailey stayed longer. The top screenshot item, at the website but not on the screencapture, the arrow is a link, calling it a tour; and linking in turn to "the Vice President's full remarks." If you reckon the Minnesota full remarks will differ much from the Georgia full remarks, you just might be guessing wrongly. The rock bands seldom except by error alter the lyrics of the song, while touring.
Well, I had a bit of a problem with that Georgia one, but say scroll down a bit further to the "Hawkeye State" tout, and watch a video. Or as much of it as you can stomach.
Ditto, MoTown. But there they post to YouTube. Ohio goes to a BOX load, "Granite State" goes like Georgia.
You'd think that with all that fueling and flying of Air Force Two, the cost of that, renting the venues, that they'd webmaster better, but, they are Republicans so cut them some eptitude slack.
Finally, given it's the Vice President, the Secret Service as the back-up band, this will not work at the Convention Center.
No miracle. Different fan base. Deader heads. Saying that, I would not say deplorables (aside from the speakers).
