POLITICS

Hundreds of Speaker Paul Ryan's constituents held a town hall meeting without him

Meg Jones
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Terrance Warthen, of Kenosha spoke out against what he said were efforts to suppress voting and make it more difficult for people to cast their ballots. He said when he was born in 1975 in Virginia he was the first of his family to grow up with the right to vote.

KENOSHA - Lining up behind microphones Sunday evening, a few hundred of Rep. Paul Ryan’s constituents directed their wrath and disapproval toward an empty chair.

“It says a lot to me that he’s not here,” said Lee Hansen of Racine, who served in the 82nd Airborne in the 1970s. “Maybe we should repeal and replace Paul Ryan.”

Forward Kenosha organizers scheduled the town hall meeting Sunday evening at a union hall to give residents of the 1st Congressional District a way to get their thoughts and opinions to the Janesville Republican.

Julia Kozel, a Forward Kenosha board member, said Ryan was invited to the event but didn’t respond. She said she found out he wasn’t coming through a story in the Kenosha News a few days earlier.

“I don’t think he appreciates hearing things contrary to his ideology,” said Kozel.

In response Sunday, a Ryan spokesman said constituents can get their opinions heard by the congressman in a variety of ways, including phone calls, faxes, email, electronic town hall meetings and visits to his offices.

“In 2017 alone, Paul has sent over 16,500 unique responses to constituents who have contacted our office. Constituent service remains the top priority,” press secretary Ian Martorana said in an email.

At the meeting, some held signs and some wore pink “pussy hats” as they listened to people discuss a variety of topics, including Medicare, Obamacare, immigration, Russian hacking of the presidential election, veterans issues, voter suppression and President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a wall along the Mexico border.

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Disgruntled voters across the United States have complained loudly to their elected representatives at meetings and listening sessions since the November elections. U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) has held several town-hall meetings this year where hundreds of people have shown up. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) last week did not attend town hall meetings in Green Bay and Madison, telling organizers in advance that he was not coming. He held an electronic town hall, answering questions from constituents by phone.

Lori Hawkins of Bristol said she worries about efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and said she believes women’s health will suffer if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Hawkins said it was a health screening through Planned Parenthood that helped detect her non-cancerous ovarian tumors, and “without them I wouldn’t have become a mother.”

Ryan “makes it sound like (Planned Parenthood) funding only goes to abortions. But it doesn’t. It goes toward preventative and diagnostic care like cancer screenings,” said Hawkins.

Ryan spokesman AshLee Strong said Ryan favors community health centers over Planned Parenthood clinics.

“Our goal is making sure women get the kind of care they need, and we believe that can best be achieved by putting money into community health centers, which provide similar services as Planned Parenthood but vastly outnumber them,” Strong said in an email.

Bill O’Connor, a retired business owner from Lake Geneva, said he does not want Ryan to push for privatizing Social Security or move to a voucher system for Medicare.

“I am afraid for our country. I’m amazed at how quickly we’ve gone from a president with such great integrity to a man who doesn’t understand how government works and has no moral compass,” O’Connor said.

Terrance Warthen of Kenosha spoke out against what he said were efforts to suppress voting and make it more difficult for people to cast their ballots. Warthen, who is African-American, said when he was born in 1975 in Virginia he was the first of his family to grow up with the right to vote.

“My father was from Georgia. He was a veteran and he had a Purple Heart before he could vote,” said Warthen. “I understand what it took to get our voting rights.”