There’s an editorial at the Janesville Gazette, hometown of Paul Ryan, complaining that Ryan won’t hold a town hall:
Paul Ryan, your constituents have waited long enough.
It’s time for a town hall, even if it’s only the telephone kind. Something. Anything to show your constituents that you—not only your staff—are hearing their concerns.
See, Our Views: Detached from his district @ Janesville Gazette (subscription req’d).
Ryan has ignored the Gazette more than once:
Your spokesman, Ian Martorana, told us you planned to hold a telephone town hall in March, but that never happened. Now he says you’re looking to schedule one in the “next three to four weeks but potentially sooner.”
Desperate for a reply, the Gazette – a paper that not long ago counted itself among community ‘movers and shakers‘, is now begging for anything, even a telephone town hall that the paper admits would be a dodge:
If the town hall isn’t for you, the telephone version works well because you can control who’s talking and when. Sure, it’s a dodge, it’s not as good as hearing from your constituents face-to-face, but it’s better than nothing.
Ryan’s in the presidential line of succession immediately after the vice president, but he won’t show up in person in his own district, and the Gazette is so lacking in influence with him that he simply ignores the paper.
They’re down to a bit of pleading:
Call Me, Maybe?