Tag: town halls

3 reasons not to vote for Paulsen

To the editor:

Rep. Erik Paulsen will not be getting my vote this autumn for three big reasons.

First, his recent town hall was only the first such event in seven years. That’s right: until the three town hall events he hosted in May, Paulsen hadn’t held a real town hall in seven long years – and my neighbors and I won’t forget that.

Second, while he positions himself as a moderate, he votes in line with President Donald Trump over 97 percent of the time, according to political data site FiveThirtyEight.com. But Trump and his radical policies don’t represent Minnesota; that’s why he lost our district by 10 points in 2016. And I don’t want anyone who votes like Trump representing me in Washington.

Finally, despite re-imagining himself as an environmentalist in his recent TV spot, in which he claimed to love the outdoors, Paulsen’s record on environmental issues has been abysmal. He holds a 16 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters, and when he was asked in 2008 if humans were contributing to climate change, he said he was “not smart enough to know if that’s true or not.”

If he wasn’t smart enough to know that humans are driving climate change, then he’s not smart enough to deserve my vote now.

Joseph Rapacki, Edina
Edina Sun-Current, August 2, 2018

St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis has held more than 600 town hall meetings. Here’s why

The following article by Mike Mullen was posted on the CityPages website September 6, 2017:

St. Cloud’s Dave Kleis can’t always make his constituents happy. But at least they know where to find him. Credit: Leila Navidi, Star Tribune

When Dave Kleis ran for mayor of St. Cloud in 2005, he made just two promises to voters.

First, he would find a way to bring back paddle boats to Lake George, a popular recreation squeezed out in city budget cuts. Second, he would hold at least one town hall meeting, open to everyone, every week.

Kleis, then a Republican state senator, won the election that November, and soon lured a private business to get paddle boats back on the water.

That second promise, the one about town halls, he’s still working on: This week, nine months into his fourth term as mayor, Kleis held his 613th face-to-face meeting with the public.

Continue reading “St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis has held more than 600 town hall meetings. Here’s why”

Democracy isn’t just about elections

To the Editor:

I cannot understand why everyone is not requesting that Congressman Erik Paulsen hold a live, interactive town hall meeting. The people have a right to ask why Paulson is supporting this travesty of a health care act. And he has a right to explain his vote and defend his action. Let’s talk and discuss as fellow Americans.

We are supposed to have government of the people, by the people, for the people. Congressman Paulson is supposed to represent we the people.

Surely, some order could be maintained by nonpartisan coordinators or monitors or even law enforcement. Democracy should be a dynamic process, not a one-time thing each election day. There are serious matters before us and this is only one of them.

Meanwhile, I urge everyone to consider signing the ongoing petition effort at www.change.org (click on Health Care under Topics on the lower right) calling for action to strip members of Congress of their health care. Their vote should impact them as much as it impacts each of us.

Steve Chicoine, Eden Prairie
Eden Prairie News, May 27, 2017

‘Town hall’ meetings mostly draw angry people. Should members of Congress hold them anyway?

The following article by Sam Brodey I was posted on the MinnPost website June 1, 2016:

MinnPost photo by Ibrahim Hirsi
3rd District activists held a town hall style event “with our without” Rep. Erik Paulsen. (It turned out to be “without.”)

What’s more American than the town hall meeting? Open debate, confrontation of those in power, yelling — town hall meetings, where communities gather for discussion and debate of the day’s issues, have it all, and they’ve persisted as a civic practice throughout U.S. history.

There’s a specific kind of town hall that gets the most attention these days, however: one in a school auditorium or coffee shop or library, where a member of Congress stands before his or her constituents and answers their questions about what’s going on in Washington. Continue reading “‘Town hall’ meetings mostly draw angry people. Should members of Congress hold them anyway?”