Updated: More Congressional Town Hall Video - Inappropriate Campaigning

If you are a Democrat in a Red State, and you don’t necessarily fit a stereotypical image of one, then something you get used to is the occasional assumption by your more rabid right wingers that everyone around them agrees with their partisan way of thinking.

Being a white guy, with no visible tattoos or piercings, having a short haircut and clean shave and dressing fairly conservatively, I get to hear a lot of things that people wouldn’t normally say if they knew they were in mixed company.

While I am used to that, I don’t know that I can ever accept that kind of assumption in a taxpayer-funded forum such as a City Council meeting, School Board meeting, or Congressional Town Hall meeting. All of these forums are places where citizens and their elected leaders come together at government expense to discuss ideas and policy, and share information about what is going on.


It is bad enough that civility and objectivity is mostly a distant memory with regards to our lawmaking bodies like the Legislature and the Congress. It is rare to hear a lawmaker speak honestly about a given topic’s positive and negative aspects without both exaggerating their own case and mocking or misrepresenting the opposition. Even worse, those who should be leading us often tolerate or even actively encourage uncivil acts by those of their constituents whom they are afraid to offend.

At the recent Congressional Town Hall meeting in Highland Village, this type of uncivil and disrespectful behavior caused me a lot of disappointment. And though I realize that the attendees at one of these meetings do not necessarily represent a cross-section of the general population, it’s enough to make one concerned about where we might be going as a society.

During this meeting, we saw and heard people doing various things that caused us concern. Toward the back of the room, where I was setup with my camera, I got to hear a lot of ‘interesting’ chatter from the disgruntled old men. At one point during one of the several mentions of the conservatives’ new bogeyman, ACORN, a man behind the camera can be heard remarking about buying ammunition. The atmosphere was something like a lynch mob. One woman received a cell phone call during the meeting and took the call without leaving the room. You had people there basically calling for insurrection, with baseless claims that their “freedoms are being taken away”, and threatening to march to the homes of Congressmen.

You can see some of this in the video below:


In addition to the comments, there were people in the room circulating a secessionist petition and literature, which seemed well-received and we saw a number of people signing. I wonder if these people know anything about the supremacy clause of the constitution, or have ever heard how the Civil War turned out? Do you think perhaps these people have gone their entire lives without pledging allegiance to “One Nation under God, indivisible?”

Others were there to promote a tax revolt being held ironically on Independence Day. I wonder if these folks think that Freedom is free? Maybe they think that a magic fairy pays for their Social Security checks and Medicare and the roads they drove to this meeting in, and the building itself where the meeting was held?

How such an audience would tolerate two subversive groups openly passing around literature, and then demonize a non-profit community reform organization like ACORN boggles my mind.

Those were audience members, and it’s understood that one can’t control everything that is said or done by an audience member. But I think that a Congressman presiding over such an event can at the very least not encourage it. Instead, Burgess not only tolerated it, but added a good bit of his own partisanship, bringing very little in the way of substance over and above the partisan talking points we can hear any day by turning on the Fox news channel.

Another thing that bothered me and some of my Democratic friends in attendance as well was an ethical lapse that occurred at the end of the meeting, when Highland Village Mayor Dianne Costa solicited the audience to make campaign contributions to Congressman Burgess’s re-election campaign. You can see this in the video below:

I want to make it clear that for all we know; Dianne Costa may be a great Mayor and a great person. We’re not passing judgment here on her person. We invited her to comment on this, but have not heard back from her yet. In the video, you can tell that Michael Burgess knows that she has just crossed a line that he needs to scramble to cover.

At an event in a government building, promoted and paid for with taxpayer dollars, campaign activities are strictly forbidden. Congressmen cannot accept contributions or work on their campaigns from their offices, and their staff are forbidden from doing anything campaign-related using government equipment or time.

Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it – because they were so well-behaved – there were plenty of local Democrats in the audience who disagree with 90% of Michael Burgess’ votes. We were not there to hear a campaign pitch. As citizens and constituents, we were there to hear the Congressman’s views, and in some cases share our own.

Public servants in their official roles need to talk about facts and leave the partisan jabs and campaigning out of these types of events.

Update #1:
Mayor Costa called today and we chatted for about 15 - 20 minutes. She and here husband had been on a fishing trip in Alaska, and had been unavailable when I first tried to contact her. Costa asserted that she did not intend to solicit campaign donations, but rather that her statement about giving "them the resources they need" was more geared towards correspondence like letters and phone calls that elected officials need to know what their constituents are thinking.

She does say that she received a reprimand from Congressman Burgess after the meeting whereupon he explained to her that solicitations like that are not done.

Costa had a few more comments on government and citizen feedback, which I hope to post later, but I just wanted to get her response here in the meantime.

You can watch the video above and decide what you think it means. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought it was a campaign solicitation.

I also should say that in preparing this posting and afterward, most folks I talked to have a very positive opinion of Mayor Costa.

Update #2 - From the office of Michael Burgess, here is the link to the full video (much better sound quality) of the Highland Village meeting. Unfortunately, the video cuts off at 1:42:06 - before the remarks of Dianne Costa.
You can find video of the Keller meeting here.