This morning I attended a town hall meeting in Junction City, Oregon held by Representative Peter DeFazio. Junction City is a small town in a farming region north of Eugene, Oregon.
The meeting was originally scheduled for the Junction City town hall but when I got there, I found it had been moved to the middle school gym. That was a very good idea. There is no way all those people could have fit inside the town hall. The gym floor was completely filled with folding chairs. The bleachers were nearly full and people were standing around the edges. DeFazio had a drawing for who got to speak. The difference between the lowest number called out and the highest was 736 so it was definitely a big crowd.
From the applause, it appeared that the generally older crowd tilted toward the right but was not overwhelmingly conservative. Interestingly, judging from parking lot bumper stickers, the crowd was not very political. While most of the bumper-stickers were conservative (Listen to Rush Limbaugh, Palin in 2012), fewer than 10% of the cars had even one bumper sticker.
I was quite impressed with how DeFazio handled the crowd and with what he said. He calls himself an independent Democrat which is what he is. He passed out a good fact sheet that addressed some of the lies that are out there plus brought up some good ideas that SHOULD be in the bill and discussed the varying possibilities for success in correcting these problems:
1)Why are health insurance companies exempt from anti-trust laws?
2)Why can't Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices?
3)Why are 17 states, including Oregon, stuck with lower payments to doctors for Medicare?
I didn't get to ask my question so maybe I'll go to another town hall this evening to try again. That one is in Eugene, a much more liberal college town. Will it be different?