My Thoughts On Adel

The primary purpose behind Town Hall Meetings is to allow the public to have an avenue where they can express themselves to their elected officials face to face. It allows citizen’s to ask a question directly to the official. This is an excellent method for our legislators to correspond with us, the residents of the district. In recent days we have seen Town Halls across the country erupt with passion and activism in quantities that we have not seen in quite some time. As Craig Robison pointed out on The Iowa Republican, it would seem that an apathetic public has awoken and nothing will contain their passion or their outrage.

Unlike some other Iowan’s roaming the halls of Congress in Washington Senator Charles Grassley’s Town Halls have maintained an openness and respect for the constituents that has rarely been witnessed this month. Instead of closing the meeting down when turnout exceeds the room capacity, Senator Grassley has moved his meetings to locales that can handle the additional throng. This is the type of openness that we, the people of this state and this country, need in order to regain lost trust.

And so it was with Senator Grassley’s Town Hall in the small community of Adel, IA. The event was originally scheduled to be held inside the Adel City Hall, but as the anticipated crowd began to swell the decision was made to move the meeting outside in order to avoid turning people away. It proved to be a very wise decision as I estimate that around 400 eager and passionate people were in attendance. They gathered around the pavilion in Adel to hear Senator Grassley speak and to hopefully ask him questions.

The throng attending the event asked some pretty good questions of Senator Grassley. There were some passionate speeches given. One in particular by a woman named Vicki Crawford who recited a speech that she had authored the night before. There were some in attendance that supported not just the health care bill that Senator Grassley is helping to draft, but also a public option for health care. But for the most part the people in attendance were opposed to the plan.

In my opinion Grassley did a good job answering the questions posed to him. He said the right things to assuage opponents of the bill while at the same time promising to work with the other Senators to deliver a bill that he believed would be better than if he was not there. Overall I would say that his responses were well received, however I do believe that he is still treading a very perilous path. One wrong step in this process and the citizen’s of Iowa will land on him like a ton of bricks.