In response to his constituents’ consistent calls for a Town Hall, Congressman Kean responded by holding a “Telephone Town Hall” last week—his second, but the first that was widely advertised. The Telephone Town Hall was not done well, but in the absence of any other vehicle to interact with the junior Congressman, I suppose we should applaud him—a notorious avoider of public interaction with constituents—for holding one at all. Truth be told, it was an insipid, highly-curated affair. Questions had to be submitted online for vetting by his staff, and those selected for a response by the Congressman were about:
Support for Israel
Concerns about kids catching up from the “evil” COVID school closure
Impact of NYC congestion on costs for NJ commuters
Biden's “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan
Shoring up Social Security funds
Cost of heating oil
Debt ceiling
Support for Ukraine
There were a couple of live “polling questions,” which included queries on how constituents would like the Congressman to hold these events going forward (in-person, by phone, virtually); on the debt ceiling and government spending (including misleading comments entirely out of context about pandemic/post pandemic spending, which has so far saved the economy from recession); and whether the government should prioritize children’s mental health to create a standard.
Congressman Kean is not a confident public speaker, and his responses ranged from the canned to the incoherent. That did not stop him in his latest newsletter from taking credit for taking “questions directly from constituents.” And that “[w]e are also responding directly to those questions that time did not allow us to answer during the town hall.” If you have ever received a response to a question submitted to the Congressman’s office, then you know the response will be indirect and evasive.
For example, in an historic week when for the first time ever, a former President was indicted on federal charges, how were there NO questions submitted about this historic event? The unprecedented news demands a statement on respect for the rule of law, even in the unlikely event that no question was submitted. Try asking his office a question about this to see what the response is like.
This phoned-in theater was a pale shadow of the Town Halls hosted by Kean’s predecessor, Tom Malinowski, often in-person and which always included “hostile” questions from constituents opposed to Malinowski’s stance on the issues. That is as it should be.
If you attended the live Town Hall hosted by the Working Families Party in the Westfield Memorial Library on June 15, cosponsored by many grassroots groups in the 7th Congressional District (including One NJ7), then you got a glimpse of how this type of constituent engagement should work, with a live panel responding to unscripted questions from the floor.
An attendee, Alice Miller, reported how she found herself seated next to a man who identified as a conservative Republican who vehemently opposed abortion. Alice assured him that the attendees valued different points of view. He grumbled quietly throughout the meeting—including about how we shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine and how he didn’t agree that historical and ongoing racism is the underpinning of current inequality. He was nervous in what was an obvious Democratic audience, but he stood his ground when his question about “drag queen indoctrination of children during library story hours” was selected.
Alice felt that Darcy Draeger’s response should be regarded as the model of how to engage someone whose beliefs are dug-in and different than our own. Darcy, a Democrat, on the left in the photo, was a candidate in the special election for a seat in the New Jersey General Assembly in November 2020. She was calm, respectful, non-judgmental, and provided a myriad of resources and books for him to consider, explaining why and how storytime is offered. Was he swayed at all? Who knows? But maybe—just maybe—he might look at Democrats a little bit differently in light of his experience.
Congressman Kean would do well to model his interactions with his constituents in similar fashion. Who knows? It could be that a little more understanding and tolerance could be the outcome.
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