🗽 Baumgartner's Town Halls
Representative Michael Baumgartner had two town halls in Eastern Washington today, the first in Ritzville, and the second more contentious one at Whitworth University, here in Spokane. Had I realized in time Friday I might have tried to score a ticket because north Spokane is my home turf. I listened to a post-town hall press conference and read a Blue Sky summary before that. The crowd was a little more confrontational, but not terrible and to his credit, I thought Baumgartner went out of his way to be accommodating and hear people out. He is a likable guy, but he can also be a bit condescending.
For instance, he likes to start with a civics lesson on how Congress works and getting bills passed through the Senate, etc., and how you need 60 votes to make that happen because of the filibuster. This is reasonable enough, but at the same time, I think the majority of people who care to show up for these, particularly in Spokane have some understanding of this.
He was also pretty rude to the Spokesman reporter in the press conference when she pressed him on the ramifications of his statements about empires being good things. When she brought up the connection between westward expansion, manifest destiny, and white nationalism he said something to the effect of "Really? From the Spokesman review?"
My biggest frustration was that he didn't appear to address what's going on with DOGE at all and that was the number one topic among the crowd. He said he wants Congress to be the most powerful branch of government and I'm basically in agreement with that sentiment, but that's nowhere near where we are now. There was also a lot of comparing what Trump is doing with Executive Orders to something Joe Biden did like loan forgiveness. And they're two completely different things.
I was also extremely frustrated by his characterization of the Spokane crowd as 99% far-left liberals. That's the most garbage characterization imaginable if you're remotely familiar with Spokane, a barely blue-trending purple city1 in the conservative half of the state. What does that even mean? Other than othering us to all his constituents in rural Eastern Washington. I feel like he was very much trying to pit us against each other. Frustrating and pretty predictable.
I am also proud of the fact that despite being a 90% white city (at the time, today it's more like 80%) we elected a black mayor for the first time back in 1981 (James Chase) and 5 out of the last 11 mayors have been women.↩