Brandon Rittiman at 9News took a scientific approach to determine whether Colorado’s Republican electeds were ducking townhalls. The science says, nope. According to Rittiman’s study, which looked at legitimate townhalls through Legistorm and verified the numbers with the legislative offices, there has been no change in townhall behavior among Colorado’s elected officials. From the report:
“The short answer is except for Rep. Ken Buck, Colorado’s Republican representatives in Congress have held roughly the same number of town halls in the first two months of 2017 as they did in January and February of 2015.”
Other than debunking the left’s wishful thinking that Republican representatives were ducking townhalls, the study found something else interesting – Democratic U.S. Senator Michael Bennet – not Cory Gardner – is actually the biggest slacker of all the federal elected officials, coming in dead last in number of townhalls. In fact, looking at townhalls held from January 2014 through February 2017, Bennet only held three townhalls. That’s right. Over the past three years, Bennet has only held ONE townhall per year.
Given the accusations that Republicans are the ones not holding townhalls, this finding is frankly shocking. To put this in perspective, Democrats are running around town screaming that Republicans aren’t holding townhalls when their own Senator Bennet held ONE TOWNHALL PER YEAR over the past three years. We don’t even know what to say about this hypocrisy, so we’ll close with Rittiman’s statement on the topic:
“In terms of numbers of town halls, both in-person and remote, there hasn’t been a tectonic shift in the number being held in Colorado.
“What has changed is the person in the Oval Office and the balance of power in Congress.
“So, when protestors complain about Gardner and Coffman ducking town halls, what they seem to want is more opportunities than before to challenge the side that won.”