Senator Ron Wyden Town Hall
Ron Wyden has been to this rodeo before. 1,120 times, in fact.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden met with voters yesterday afternoon.
It is 200 people seeing a U.S. Senator in person and hearing him respond directly to their questions. It is something special. It is a public demonstration of representative democracy
He visits each of Oregon's 36 counties for a open meeting with constituents every year. Voters ask any question they want. He responds.
Wyden's town halls bring disproportionate contact with the rural parts of the state. Wyden is from Portland and he has a home there. He represented a Portland district in Congress before moving to the Senate. It would be easy to peg Wyden as a creature of Portland, and now with his long tenure in the Senate, of Washington, D.C. There is a widespread suspicion in southern and eastern Oregon that the state is Portland-centric in its politics. It is a reasonable suspicion. All statewide elected officials are Democrats. Public officials elected statewide need to win votes in bright blue Portland, and Wyden does.
The city of Portland is in Multnomah County. The county has a population of 780,000 people. The median county, number 19, Clatsop County, has 32,000 people. The smallest counties, numbers 20 through 36, have a total population of about 270,000. Some are as small as a population of 2,000 in Sherman County, and 1,400 in Wheeler.
Wyden is best described as "center left" in his politics. Wyden's new book, It takes Chutzpah, describes the intricacies of legislative committees and inside-baseball politics, but there is none of that in his town halls. Instead, it is a back and forth of a voter voicing a concern and Wyden describing what he supports and what he would do about it.
At this town hall he may have mentioned forest, water and other natural resource issues briefly -- he has in other town halls -- but yesterday he kept coming back to the threats to Medicaid in the "big, beautiful bill" which just passed the House of Representatives. Access to healthcare is a rural-America issue. Rural Oregonians are disproportionately eligible for Medicaid, Medicaid keeps rural hospitals alive because otherwise much of the costs hospitals bear providing emergency care would be uncollectible. Rural Oregonians need the Medicaid expansion, but don't appear to appreciate Democrats fighting to protect it. Southern and eastern Oregon counties overwhelmingly support their Republican congressman, Cliff Bentz, who just voted to cut Medicaid.
Counties representing about half the land area of the state have voted to become part of Idaho
Counties in the eastern part of the state requested to move the state boundary to make themselves part of Idaho. It is not a serious effort -- a boundary change won't happen -- but it is a demonstration of their feeling of estrangement from real influence and representation. They voted overwhelmingly against Wyden, too. Wyden still shows up year after year.
The town hall meeting audience was self-selected. Town hall participants were given a ticket, and if their ticket number is drawn they can ask a question. None of the questions asked by the 17 people whose tickets were drawn came from a MAGA, anti-immigration, anti-Medicaid, pro-tariff point of view. Instead, the questioners asked, in different ways, "what can we do to stop the Trump disaster." These are fair questions, but not representative of the Jackson County voters, who voted for Trump 52-45 over Harris.
Wyden did get confronted at the meeting. It came from shouted questions and accusations accusing Wyden of being too friendly to Israel, and for failing to protect Palestinians in Gaza. Wyden said he supported both Israelis and Palestinians who supported peaceful efforts to protect innocent lives. Wyden, like most Americans, says he wants a two-state solution. The problem is than neither Israelis nor Palestinians want it.
The town hall lasted almost 90 minutes. Then Wyden stood and took informal questions from a cluster of people who wanted more.
People looking for a dramatic "Breaking News!" headline to come out of the event might feel disappointed. This is democracy in America in 2025. It isn't blood, explosions, or gunshots. Its representative democracy, live and in person.
Thanks, Peter. You have written exactly what my take away from yesterday was. I'm ultimately impressed that Ron Wyden shows up and takes unscripted questions. Even when there was someone shouting at him, he didn't rely on police to drag them away. Clearly he is a representative of the people. And open to being responsible to them.
One of the things Wyden said is that he would be publicizing parts of the 1100-page tax and spending bill recently passed by the House that he considered particularly significant, such as the cuts to Medicaid. I must say, Big Beautiful Bill sounds more like a male stripper than legislation.
This being Memorial Day, it’s good to remember that Trump bragged on the Howard Stern Show about dodging STDs instead of bullets, calling that “my personal Vietnam.” He disparaged prisoners of war saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.” He insulted Gold Star families that opposed him, and his campaign called them “shills.” Trump’s chief of staff, retired four-star General Kelly, revealed that he referred to service members as “suckers” and “losers” and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
Trump’s last visit to Arlington cemetery resulted in an altercation with staff trying to enforce its rules. Today he went there and used the occasion to attack his predecessor and boast that under him, “"We will do better than we've ever done as a nation, better than ever before.” It was a relatively benign follow-up to his morning all-caps unhinged rant calling much of the country “scum,” but no less a lie.