Burgess Town Hall Lively but Un-Eventful

I'm happy to report that I'm back from the Congressional town hall meeting, held in Denton this morning, and the video is processing as I type this.

I had concerns about some of the more radical elements attempting to disrupt the meeting, based on some emails I had seen, but the crowd of about 600 - 800 people* were fairly well-behaved, even though there was some attempt at shouting over each other, and at least one attempt by a man to provoke any union members that might be present into a fight.

(Dallas Morning News estimates 1500 attended. I'll defer to their judgment)

Burgess spoke for less than about 5 minutes at the beginning, then took questions from the audience for the remainder of the hour and half session, staying later to speak to some on an individual basis.

Because of the overflow crowd, Burgess delivered his remarks from a stage setup outside of the Art Center. An overhead door on the side of the Center was opened up to allow an unobstructed view, and a PA system was setup to project over the sometime-chattering crowd.

The questions and applause levels would seem to indicate healthy numbers of both supporters and detractors of Health Care Reform. Discussing it afterward with some attendees who stuck around to chat, most of them thought that it was about 50/50, though I would guess it was probably more like 65/35 against reform. Both sides brought signs, and to my surprise, some were actually allowed in the building.

There was no overt campaigning by any elected official, but plenty of Burgess' supporters sported campaign wear, with at least one woman bringing in a full-sized Burgess campaign yard sign.

I had emailed in advance with my concerns about whether there would be a place to setup my camera, and whether adequate security arrangements were in place. Though I didn't receive a response by the end of business on Friday, I was pleased to see that there were what looked to be about 10 Denton Police officers present - compared to the typical single uniformed officer. In addition, there was sufficient media area to get mostly unobstructed footage.

Knowing that I'm not exactly Burgess' favorite citizen journalist, I do want to acknowledge his staff for being courteous and professional in accomodating me and the several other bloggers that were there to cover the event.

When I get the video edited, I'll post what I can, and provide more commentary on what I thought were the high and low points of this meeting.

Video #1: Before the meeting.




Video #4


(Still editing and processing the rest. There's a lot of it, and the audio is not so great.)