Erie County, Pennsylvania, has been (until last year) a reliable Democratic stronghold. However, in the election of 2010, Republicans swept all statewide elective offices (US Senate, Governor) as well as both houses of the state legislature. (Republicans already controlled the state senate, but they also took control of the state house.) At that time, Erie County was entirely within Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District (PA-03); Republican Mike Kelly defeated incumbent Democrat Kathy Dahlkemper in that race.
As happened in several states after that election, with Republicans in total control when the time arrived to redraw congressional districts, they gerrymandered the districts to their advantage, and very effectively so. In our corner of the state, Erie County was split between PA-03 and PA-05. This split was engineered to prop up then-new Congressman Mike Kelly by dumping half the county’s voters into Glenn Thompson’s extremely red district. (PA-05 spans half the state, from Erie County all the way to State College, 210 miles away by car.) Ever since then, both congressmen have ignored Erie County, despite the fact that our region has the greatest population density of either district.
The kick in the pants to progressives provided by the election of 2016 has inspired some of the constituents of these congressmen to demand long overdue attention. Keystone Progress has an Erie chapter, currently led by Dan Doubet, that has spearheaded organizing protests and other actions against encroaching fascism. Today’s action was going to Mike Kelly’s Erie office to demand an in-person, open town hall within the next 30 days. (His most recent in-person town hall in Erie was in February of 2011.) Approximately 50 people showed up (see above), more than could fit into the office. Letters written by the protesters, and by others who were unable to attend, demanding the town hall, were delivered. Video link below the fold.
The encounter was recorded on Facebook Live. You can watch it at this link.
We took Kelly’s staffer a bit by surprise, I think. Once he understood the demand, he provided the phone number for Kelly’s scheduler in Washington. When the scheduler suggested a town hall by phone, shouts of “NO!” arose from the crowd. One of the protesters present, Cindy Purvis, agreed to be the local community contact person for arranging the town hall. We left chanting “We’ll be back!” if they failed to follow up on this demand.
The hope is to have town halls for both congressmen. Arranging a demonstration at Glenn Thompson’s office is more difficult as his closest regional office is in Titusville, 45 miles to the south of Erie. Also, Kelly has apparently distinguished himself by being one of Trump’s favorite congressmen—this may be all you need to know about Kelly’s character and intellect.
We will see how effective this action was in the days to come. As has been commented by others here, because the county is gerrymandered, these congressmen can get away with just ignoring us, but they will not be able to avoid being shamed by the constituents they’re ignoring. This is just the beginning.