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CT's Jim Himes: Crash & Burn Townhall fiasco

Submitted by Ironman on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 18:53
in

Freshman CT Democrat Jim Himes really stepped in it tonight. Hard to tell whether it was cowardice or incompetence, though neither usually are helpful to prolonged incumbency.

Tonight Himes was holding a forum at the Stamford Senior Center. Now what it was about seems to be an amophrous entity.

Early in the day the Redding Pilot  posted that the Himes forum was about the FAA. I'm sure people in Himes's district complain about low flying planes. The same people would live somewhere else if Kennedy and LaGuardia weren't less than an hour away, though.   

Problem is one conservative blogger from Greenwich got on Himes's e-mail list. And Himes invited people to a forum which appeared to be on health care reform. And the blogger is not a happy camper.

Here's the Himes invite.  

chris –

I wanted to send you an urgent invitation to an important town hall with Rep. Jim Himes this evening, Thursday, August 6th. He’ll be talking to constituents and gathering feedback — this is an ideal opportunity to make sure your support for health insurance reform is seen and heard at exactly the right time.

Our congressional representatives are back home this month, and they’re facing more and more pressure from special interests on health insurance reform. It’s critical that we get out there and show them where we stand

Here's what the blogger said happened

 I went over to see for myself what these special interests looked like. Not a Brooks Brothers suit in sight, unless you count all the Himes staffers, and they spent all their time explaining to an increasingly irritated crowd of older (35-70, I’d guess) constituents that no, the Congressman wasn’t here, that if he did show up he was planning to talk about the FAA and wasn’t going to take questions from anyone. Uh huh.

Now it’s always possible that Himes, as his staff said, was planning to speak about the FAA – nothing better suited for a talk at the Senior Center than FAA matters – and that his crew got a little too enthusiastic urging supporters to show up and drown out the special interest insurance company flacks (they didn’t show up either). But if the man were truly our representative and came across a crowd of a hundred-and-fifty  or so people all of whom wanted to talk about ObamaCare and none of them there to discuss airplanes, wouldn’t you think he’d change his plans and address their concerns?

Particularly since they guy just wrote an op-ed today on health care reform...jeez....like maybe folks might wonder if he'd be willing to break with President Obama on this?

Now this guy is labelling Himes the "Coward of the County":  Harsh.

Yeah, but at least I never voted for Jim Himes!

I'm not ready to label Himes the Coward of Fairfield County yet, but like Lucy Arnaz, he's got some ''splaining to do. 

 ===UPDATE===

It gets worse.

I scrolled further down Fountain's site and guess who invited him to a health care forum tonight?

Jennifer Just, the CT leader of the permanent Obama campaign.

We're going to trust the same people who screw up a town hall meeting with our lives and health? Please  

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Rep. Himes' "FAA Meeting"

Submitted by ameryx on Sun, 08/16/2009 - 22:24.

FWIW, here is my experience.

In early August, I began calling his office to find out when there would be town hall meetings. I was told that none had been scheduled. Then a friend of mine forwarded a mailing from an insurance lobbying group with information about the meeting at the Stamford Senior Center. I called Himes' office back and asked about that meeting, and was told it was for the people at the Senior Center only, and the public was "discouraged" from coming.

So, I called WFSB TV and told them about the semi-closed meeting. They asked my why Himes' people were discouraging the public from attending. I noted that that was a good question.

The next day, Himes' people told me that the meeting was open to the public, but the topic was the FAA, and no questions on any other topic would be entertained. Interestingly, Himes is not on the committee that oversees the FAA; he is, however, on some (sub?)committee that deals with Homeland security, and the FAA has something to do with homeland security, so that was why he was having a meeting on the FAA. (Though the FAA topic discussed turned out to be about noise pollution, which seems --- distant --- from homeland security issues.) My theory is that he could think of nothing more boring than the FAA on which to have a meeting, and he was able to dragoon some FAA execs to a meeting on short notice.

Having discouraged attendance in the first place, and then discouraged anyone interested in anything other than airplane noise pollution, he then entertained questions on health care reform.

Then he skipped town, because it was just so darned important that he meet with Palestinians in Gaza.

Now, his office is promoting a September 2nd (the Friday of Labor Day weekend!) meeting in Norwalk as a continuation of his listening tour. (See here, for instance.) Seems like he's not too keen to meet his constituents face to face. One (1) meeting during the August recess to discuss health care reform? And that on an evening when many people will be headed out for that final summer break?