When your own US reps and senators won’t talk to you, borrow someone else’s | Opinion
The good news is Wichita will finally be getting the congressional town hall meeting it’s demanded and deserved for years.
The frankly embarrassing news is that with our own congressional representative and senators hiding out from their constituents in the Witless Protection Program, now we’re having to import representation from other states.
This Sunday, Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Maxwell Frost will hold a town hall at Wichita State University’s Hughes Metropolitan Complex, where they’ve agreed to answer Kansans’ complex questions about what the heck is going on in Washington and around the nation.
Murphy is from Connecticut, Frost is from Florida. Both are Democrats.
And they’re doing what our Wichita Rep. Ron Estes and Kansas Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, Republicans all, should have been doing all along.
In 40-plus years of covering government and politics, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
While politicians might from time to time invite colleagues from other states to drop by and campaign for them, it’s practically unheard of for members of Congress to jump state lines and field questions from the general public because the state’s own representatives and senators won’t.
This will be the fourth time that Murphy and Frost have joined up to bring a town hall experience to areas that have been deprived of them.
“Congressman Frost and Sen. Murphy have been kind of on a town hall tour across the country, going to red districts or states or both, and just showing up where the congressman of that district refuses to hold a town hall,” said Frost spokeswoman Gianna Trocino Bonner.
Leading Kansas, which is hosting the event, reached beyond Kansas after months of trying to get local politicians to make some public appearances and answer some questions.
“Honestly, we have reached out to all of our leadership, everyone from Sen. (Jerry) Moran all the way to Gov. (Laura) Kelly with the expressed request of, there’s just a lot of questions people have, and if you come meet with us, we’ll work with your schedule whatever needs done,” said group spokesman Noah Taylor. “And we’ve heard back from some as just straight noes, and others, we’ve been met with silence.”
Our Kansas Republican congressfolk have a lot to answer for in these troubled times.
We just bombed Iran, Marines and National Guard troops are occupying Los Angeles, masked men are sweeping Home Depots and throwing brown people in unmarked vans, Medicaid and federal nutrition programs are on the chopping block, tariff wars are threatening Kansas agriculture and haphazard cuts by Elon Musk and his DOGE boys have crippled government services from health surveillance to weather forecasting.
And through it all, Rep. Estes and Sens. Marshall and Moran are telling us “talk to the hand.”
We’re not the only ones. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, GOP congressfolk across America have been told by their leadership to run for cover.
In March, Marshall attempted a town hall in the middle-of-nowhere town of Oakley. It was a disaster, because constituents who drove as much as 10 hours round-trip to be there got tired of watching him answer marshmallow-soft questions from his own staff (or as he calls them, “you girls”).
Marshall ended up bolting from the stage 20 minutes early after a local retiree spoke up with a polite but difficult question about veterans’ benefits.
The last open town hall I can find for Estes in Wichita was seven years ago. As far as I can tell, he now only takes softball questions at Republican Party events and nauseatingly content-managed “telephone town halls.”
Leading Kansas is hosting Sunday’s Murphy/Frost town hall from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Metroplex, (29th North and Oliver). As of Monday, when the promotional campaign for the event had just gotten fully underway, 800 people had already registered to attend, Taylor said. The venue holds 1,700.
The previous three Murphy/Frost town halls have drawn capacity crowds in Sarasota, Fla.; Warren, Mich.; and Saxapahaw, N.C., Bonner said.
Online RSVP’s are required to hold a seat, although there will be overflow areas and a livestream available, Taylor said. You can find the signup link at Leading Kansas’ Facebook page.
