OPINION: Here’s a tale of two town hall meetings in the Pacific Northwest

On the afternoon of Feb. 23, I attended a town hall meeting. I’ll come back to it, but first you need to hear, if you haven’t already, about another one, the day before that, in Coeur d’Alene.

The event attracting about 450 people was held at Coeur d’Alene High School, organized by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, and featured most of the area’s state legislators, who all are Republicans. Most but not all of the audience was Republican. However, some were Democrats or at least not aligned with the GOP organization and the elected officials. Some of them shouted out at the speakers, who talked mainly about legislative activities. When one mentioned anti-abortion legislation, someone called out, “Women are dying,” and another said, “Doctors are leaving our state.”

Teresa Borrenpohl, a Democrat who had run unsuccessfully for the Idaho Legislature, was in the audience, and among other things called out, “Is this a town hall or a lecture?” She was warned to, basically, shut up, which she didn’t.

What followed was captured on many cell phone recordings, and has gone viral and international. (Another wonderful public relations plug for Idaho.) Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris grabbed her sleeve and told her to stand up and leave the room; she refused. He appeared to signal to three men, employees of a private security company (though they were not uniformed), who grabbed her arms, dragged her to the aisle, appeared to bind her wrists and then dragged her across the floor, out of the room. She asked these people who seized her to identify themselves (she said she was concerned she was being kidnapped). They didn’t reply. She was later charged with offenses which, later still, were dropped.

The blowback has run the other way as well. The sheriff’s office said it would investigate, and the Associated Press reported that city ordinances require security personnel to be clearly marked as such, which these men weren’t. Since then the sheriff and the security service have been looked into.

You might expect that, as a matter of public relations, the Republican organizers might have tried to downplay or maybe deny most of this, but that seems not to have happened. Why? Gregory Graf, an activist from eastern Idaho who has had run-ins in recent years with Republican leaders, suggested this: “When those within their ranks use aggressive tactics, they are rewarded and platformed. Yet if anyone dares mirror even a hint of that behavior — a slip in response to years of torment — they are immediately branded as the aggressor.” Intimidation of opposition, then, is in their playbook.

As for what an actual town hall is:

The day after the Coeur d’Alene ruckus, I attended a town hall in Oregon, hosted by that state’s Sen. Jeff Merkley. As a senator, he has hosted at least one in every Oregon county every year, more than 500 to date. This one, energized (electrified?) by national events, drew about as many people as in Coeur d’Alene, many times the usual number for the location.

It was typical, though. Merkley spoke for three or four minutes, and the rest was devoted to randomly-chosen questions from the unscreened audience. The event went smoothly. No one was dragged away.

That was a town hall, placing large emphasis on open audience participation, not on passively listening to speeches. The event in Coeur d’Alene was something else. In fact, in Kootenai County there’s now an ongoing dispute over what kind of event it actually was and whether it was even intended to be public.

None of this should discourage you from attending town halls. They are a fine example of how our system is supposed to work.

If your elected officials won’t encounter you and other voters — whether those voters agree with each other or not — and allow for actual conversation, then you need some new elected officials. I long ago decided that no elected official unwilling to meet me and other constituents face to face, and encourage questioning and comment even if they were critical, ever would get my vote.

I recommend that policy to you.

Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.