In what has clearly become a trend, Massachusetts constituents who tried to visit Scott Brown’s office today were met with a locked door and no answers.
They had gathered outside Brown’s campaign office on Summer St in Boston to urge their Senator to drop his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Even after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, Brown is supporting his party’s effort to repeal the historic health care reform act. The U.S. House of Representatives has already scheduled a vote to repeal the law for Wednesday, July 11.
A wide range of Massachusetts organizations representing families, women, seniors, young adults, and small business owners joined together in a letter to Brown, which was left taped on the office door. Check out this video from the action:
First, you showed up at his campaign office, whereas since he’s an incumbent Senator you should have contacted or gone to his government office.
Second, I’m not the least bit surprised that a campaign office is closed on a Sunday at this point in the campaign. Elizabeth Warren’s people were probably all out canvassing rather than office-sitting.
Chris, you’re absolutely right — you’d assume an incumbent senator would welcome a group of concerned constituents to his government office to discuss issues as important as these. But Brown has repeatedly denied requests for meetings at both his DC and Massachusetts offices. It’s been a consistent pattern over the last 2.5+ years — Brown has not attended a single public town hall or open forum since his election to the US Senate. Sadly, constituents have been left with few other options than to seek him out wherever and whenever they might have the opportunity to demand answers.
As for office hours, most competitive campaigns are regularly open at this point in an election cycle — running phone banks, staging door-to-door canvasses, etc. Staffers don’t turn the lights out and lock the doors when volunteers are out in the field (or upstairs, for that matter). $0.01
I can recall only this instance.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-23/metro/31382847_1_summer-jobs-fairs-job-creation
The students came unannounced and I also vaguely remember it being learned that Brown wasn’t even there because he was away on Guard duty.
A group of out-of-work constituents spent the better part of a year trying to meet with Brown to discuss his position on unemployment benefits (Brown had already voted eight times to end benefits with additional votes on the horizon). Each time, they were told Brown “didn’t have time” or “wasn’t available to meet”. His spokespeople, spun a different story to the media, of course.
National media reported on a large group that sat and waited all day in Brown’s DC office for a chance to meet with him (he made time for DC lobbyists that day, but none for the unemployed Mass. constituents). Here’s one article that goes into the visit at length:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165016/occupying-senator-scott-browns-office
Here’s an article about an attempt to meet with him on a day he was allegedly scheduled to be in Boston:
http://southend.patch.com/articles/unemployed-residents-rally-at-scott-brown-s-office-206958f8
And from a smaller delegation that actually PAID to see him in Natick, but were denied an opportunity to ask questions after Brown left early: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x896451329/Scott-Brown-cries-foul-on-federal-gridlock
There’s plenty more examples, of course…but these are just a taste of Scott Brown’s clear patter of avoiding tough questions about his voting record.
…but if the Brown folks aren’t working as hard as they absolutely can to identify and get out their voters, then who am I to complain!:)