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Kline’s Town Hall Had Genesis in Constituent Complaints
By Jeff Fecke | April 3, 2007
U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., will hold a town hall meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. this evening at Lakeville South High School. And it’s almost certain that he wouldn’t be if not for some of his 2nd District constituents, who pushed hard for a public discussion.While the event is open to questions on a variety of topics, its origin started with the complaints of anti-war activists, who spent six weeks visiting Kline’s office, pressing for a public opportunity to air their grievances.
“We were contacted by the organizers of the Occupation Project,” said Sue Skog, the district’s coordinator for the Peace Alliance, who helped organize the protests. “We said we’d try, but we didn’t know how many [people] we could get.”
Organizers managed to get about 50 protesters to show up at Kline’s office in March, but they weren’t allowed to stay very long.
“We went, and the occupation part of the idea obviously wasn’t going to work, because they called the police,” said Skog.
The call to remove protesters from Kline’s office was met with an outcry from community activists, as well as a column from the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman, which one activist credited with forcing Kline’s staff to relent.
“After Nick Coleman published the article resulting from that [incident], the Kline office modified their stance,” said John Raplinger, one of the protesters. “They weren’t real receptive, but they invited us in and had coffee and donuts for us.”Eventually, the protesters got a meeting with Kline, in which they pressed for an open town hall forum to address the war. Kline and his staff were less than enthusiastic.
“They kept saying, ‘these never work,’ and ‘you won’t be happy with it,’” said Skog. “I think they’d probably not do the town hall forum this way; they like the tele-town forum,” she added, referring to Kline’s periodic teleconference with constituents.
Kline did eventually relent, and scheduled a town hall meeting, if for no other reason than the protesters promised to stop visiting his office if he would. But he soon made it clear that he did not want the meeting to be just about Iraq.
“We relented on that,” said Skog, explaining that they were happy just to get the forum. “If we can even get a few questions answered — he’s kind of run his campaigns on his opponent [being] bad, and hasn’t really stated his position.”
The Kline camp also declined to use a moderator, insisting that Kline run the meeting himself.
The focus on issues other than Iraq did not bother Raplinger, who said he has questioned some of Kline’s other votes.
“I don’t like the lack of willingness to be open and to face the tough questions. Why did he continue to support the medicare prescription drug benefit?” Raplinger asked rhetorically. “We need frankness and honesty and fairness in answering questions that constituents have.”
Skog seemed to keep her hopes for the meeting in perspective.
“People deserve to know, and deserve to have some dialogue with our representatives,” she said. “We’re hoping that everyone is civil, and we’re stressing that to the people we’re in contact with. We’re hoping he takes as many questions as time allows.”
Kline’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.
(Cross-posted from MinMon)
Topics: Iraq, MN02, Minnesota Monitor | 1 Comment »
August 19th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
[...] failing to host a forum about health care so far during Congress’s summer recess, but hosting only one forum at all since his election to the House in 2002. Kline serves Minnesota’s Second Congressional [...]