Michigan Republicans turn to tele-town halls as Trump critics demand answers

• Michigan members of Congress holding telephone town halls — but few in-person meetings — amid vocal frustration by Trump critics
• Democratic activists, and in some cases party officials, have been organizing town hall meetings for Republican lawmakers 
• GOP US Rep. Jack Bergman says he’ll meet with constituents and small groups, ‘but we’re not doing drama, sorry’

On a Michigan telephone town hall in early March, a frustrated caller accused US Rep. Bill Huizenga and fellow Republicans of "sitting back with your thumbs up your butt" while President Donald Trump does “whatever he wants." 

The caller, an older man, had initially asked about Medicaid before pivoting to the president's executive actions and cutting military aid to Ukraine. He used an expletive to describe the lawmaker’s response before the line went dead. 

"Well, that sounds like you just hung up on yourself, which is a good idea,” responded Huizenga, R-Zeeland.

Two months into Trump's second term, Democrats and other voters angry with Trump have been directing the discontent at their representatives in Congress, prompting the head of the House GOP's campaign arm to reportedly warn Republican lawmakers against holding in-person town halls.

In Michigan, only a small contingent of lawmakers have held in-person meetings this year, while telephone forums have become fonts of outrage over slash-and-burn tactics in Washington and fears for the future of key federal programs like Social Security and Medicare.

To be sure, there’s no requirement that representatives meet with constituents, and politicians of all stripes — including Democrats — have made virtual meetings more common because of their convenience and ability to screen out belligerent participants.

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Lately, Democrats have sought to leverage town halls for political ends by hosting their own for Republican lawmakers, who invariably do not attend. Trump personally has suggested that “paid troublemakers” are disrupting GOP town halls in other states.

Democrats insist the response has been a sincere outpouring of dissatisfaction with Trump. But they've taken heat too.

"Do more," a woman told US. Rep. Haley Stevens and other Democratic officials during an in-person town hall two weeks ago. We need "someone standing up and saying, 'Stop this,’" another man told her to applause. 

An empty chair

Demands for in-person town halls have stretched to Republican members of Congress across Michigan, including US Reps. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, and Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet.

Bergman represents Michigan’s largest congressional district, which contains the entirety of the Upper Peninsula and much of the northern Lower Peninsula, including Traverse City. 

It’s not clear when he last held a town hall meeting — the last to receive media coverage was in April 2017 — and his office did not return a request for comment from Bridge Michigan. But Bergman has made clear he does not plan to hold another anytime soon. 

“We saw in 2017 the left, the resist movement, the whatever they called themselves, they disrupted good people who were trying to ask questions,” Bergman said in a recent interview with WLUC-TV in Marquette 

“It was like a bunch of middle-school kids who weren’t paying attention to the teacher or the principal. The bottom line is we will always be available to meet with constituents and small groups and talk about issue things — but we’re not doing drama, sorry.”

With Bergman sitting out, local chapters of the left-leaning organization Indivisible have begun holding town halls without him. The first, in Escanaba, a town of about 12,000 people in the Upper Peninsula, drew a standing-room only crowd who aired concerns and frustrations to an empty chair. 

Bergman Communications Director James Hogge called the town hall a “stunt.” In a letter to the Escanaba Daily Press, he argued meetings are being “put together by far-left activists who have played this game” since Bergman was first elected in 2016.

But activists are organizing more meetings for Bergman in Houghton and Traverse City, where the local Indivisible chapter has rented a 400-seat auditorium. 

John DeSpelder, a leader and co-founder of the group, said they reached capacity within a few days and hundreds of additional voters and residents have signed up to watch a livestream of the event.

“They would like to tell their stories to their representative, because they think that's really what democracy is about,” DeSpelder said of local voters. “If the representative is not going to be present, then we are going to tell the stories around the district, so that the people within the district know that they're not the only ones that are concerned about it.”

DeSpelder said his group organized the town hall and other events without coordination or significant funding from national counterparts. He argued it was “completely disrespectful” to insinuate otherwise.

“These are not people that are being ginned up by some outside force or some creepy fifth column or some communist conspiracy,” he said. “It’s people that are residents here.”

Intimidated by voters?

Antagonistic town halls are not new to American politics.

Democrats know the events can make for potent media moments — in part, because they were on the receiving end of the public outrage little more than a decade ago, amid the rise of the Tea Party movement. 

Then-US Rep. John Dingell stopped holding town halls in 2009 after he was booed and heckled over the Affordable Care Act during a public event, where one man called him a “fraud” and “liar.”

Sixteen years later, the demands for GOP town halls is “a lot of political theater, and not super constructive for anybody involved,” said Jason Roe, a Republican consultant who worked for Barrett’s winning campaign last year. 

While Roe acknowledged anxiety among voters, it’s not to the level “where people are organically showing up to protest members of Congress district offices or show up at town halls,” he alleged. 

“At least this time, there is substantive policy to complain about, rather than, you know, ‘I hate the Orange Man,’ which I think defined 2017,” added Roe, noting that voters had demanded town hall meetings during Trump’s first term too. 

But ducking town halls shows members of Congress are “by and large” a “little intimidated by the voters,” said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic consultant with the  Grassroots Midwest consulting firm in Lansing. 

“What's different between now and six months ago is that people are really pissed,” he said. It is not just voters who comprise the “bases” of each political party, Hemond argued, because “people are seeing their retirement savings vaporized in the span of a couple of weeks.”

Concerns about cuts to Social Security and Medicaid — long a third rail in American politics — have also been a regular refrain in recent tele-town halls.

In one such virtual forum, Democratic US Sen. Elissa Slotkin urged listeners to “be vocal with every one of their elected representatives … regardless of their party,” to ensure they can’t think “‘it's no big deal if we cut these programs.’”

‘Do more’

Democrats, too, have felt some pressure from constituents to “do more,” as a speaker put it during a recent town hall with Stevens, D-Birmingham. Legislation and lawsuits alone, they said, are not a sufficient response to Trump.

In the event, Stevens was also accused of “not being genuine in her words or action” because of her acceptance of money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

US Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit, has scheduled additional town halls, writing on Facebook, “unlike Republicans, I am not scared to face my constituents.”

Another town hall held by telephone with Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, was reportedly plagued by technical issues, with constituents alleging they were not provided the information needed to participate.

When they were polled on support for billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, 70% were against the department’s actions.

The national Democratic Party is looking to directly seize on the moment by holding “people’s town halls” in GOP districts across the country, including in the Macomb County district held by US Rep. John James. 

The Livingston County Democratic Party, too, is part of a coalition calling for a town hall with Barrett, who replaced Slotkin in Congress this year after his fall victory over Curtis Hertel Jr., who is now chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.

The coalition is collecting petition signatures “demanding an in-person town hall” and plans to deliver them to his office later this week, along with an invitation to an April 22 event they plan to hold without him if he does not attend. 

“We are scheduling this during the Easter recess so Barrett has plenty of time to arrange his schedule to be there,” July Daubenmier, chair of the Livingston County Democratic Party, said in a statement. 

“We will have a chair set aside for him if he comes, so there should be no excuse for him not to be there,” she added. “The important thing is that the people will have a chance to be heard, one way or another.”