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Amid growing unease in his backyard, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter holds telephone town hall [1]
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Date: 2025-03-24
This story was updated on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, to add details about the town hall’s screening process for questions and voting data from previous elections.
Amid widespread outcry about the Trump administration’s cutbacks to federal programs and agencies, Republican leaders last month urged members of the House of Representatives not to hold town halls in their home districts.
On Monday, Coastal Georgia’s congressman, Buddy Carter, spurned that advice. Kind of.
The six-term lawmaker from St. Simons held a telephone town hall from Washington instead, fielding 11 questions in about 50 minutes.
Carter offered his views on topics ranging from wayward judges blocking Donald Trump’s agenda (“unelected, activist judges . . . undoing his policy decisions from the bench”) to the fate of Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (“The president has been clear: Do not touch Social Security. Do not touch Medicare. Do not touch Medicaid”).
Questions posed to Carter were screened beforehand by the telephone town hall’s organizers.
One caller, a resident of St. Simons, told The Current he waited on hold for 20 minutes before one of the town hall’s organizers came on the line and asked him for his proposed question, which was whether Congress was going to continue to allow the executive branch to usurp its authority. He never got a chance to ask it.
The man, who was granted anonymity to discuss the screening process for fear he could be barred from future telephone town halls, later said did not know for certain why he and his question were passed over. He believes, however, that the question’s edgy content — not time limitations — was the main factor.
“I was asking him basically why, in my view, he wasn’t doing his job,” the man explained.
Those telephone town hall participants who succeeded in posing a question to Carter thanked him for the opportunity to address him. None had a sore word or biting criticism. There were no angry outbursts.
‘Not productive’
Following several contentious open-door, in-person town halls, Carter hasn’t held any in Coastal Georgia since 2018, according to a search of media outlets in Coastal Georgia. He and his office don’t view them as “productive,” said a source with direct knowledge of Carter’s discussions with his staff about communication strategy.
By “productive,” Carter apparently means that there is nothing to gain politically and much to lose in holding an in-person town hall, either from tough questioning or less-than-flattering television news coverage.
That calculation may especially apply to Carter’s evident avoidance of open-door, in-person town halls in Chatham, the 1st District’s most populous county, and Savannah, its most populous city.
Although he has been successful districtwide, winning his last four reelection bids by an average of 18.5% of the vote, he has lost in Chatham all four times, by an average of 13% of the vote.
Carter’s aversion to the unpredictability and contentiousness of open-door, in-person town halls extended to last year’s reelection campaign.
He refused at least three face-to-face debates with his Democratic opponent, Patti Hewitt, in Bryan, McIntosh and Chatham, according to Republican and Democratic Party organizers in those counties.
Asked by one caller on Monday when he was going to again hold an in-person town hall in Coastal Georgia, Carter didn’t answer, though he acknowledged that “a lot of people have been requesting these.” Instead, he defended the telephone town hall format, saying it’s “efficient” and reaches “so many more people” than an in-person town hall.
“We communicate in this office as well as any office in Congress,” he said of his staff. “We let you know what we’re doing, where we’re going to be, what we’re trying to achieve.”
In addressing Carter, the questioner implored him to hold in-person town halls. “We love the in-person factor,” explained the person identified only as Keyshawn. “You are a representative of the people. [We] want to see our representatives in action whenever we can.”
Carter didn’t relent. He said in-person town halls “can get out of control,” adding that “we had some problems” at past town halls, which led police to request that he not “do them again.” He did not specify what the problems were. Nor did he identify which police asked him to stop holding in-person town halls.
Regular occurrence
Although members of Congress have no legal obligation to hold town halls of any kind, it is unlikely that Monday’s slickly produced event will quiet the growing clamor among Carter’s constituents for face-to-face answers to questions about the effects of cost-cutting and tariffs on government programs they’ve come to rely upon.
Demonstrations outside Carter’s offices in Savannah and Brunswick are now a regular occurrence. In Brunswick, the protests are ad hoc, made up of a cross-section of retirees, military veterans, county Democrats and members of a local women’s group. Discussions are underway about better ways to communicate their concerns.
Carter was invited to attend a town hall at The Brick in Brunswick last week where, the meeting announcement said, concerns of “residents of the Golden Isles” for the “future of working-class Americans” would be discussed. He did not show.
Carter evidently remains keen to avoid a public scrap or humiliation.
Asked last month by Scott Ryfun, a conservative talk show host in Brunswick, whether people “agitating” for him to hold in-person town halls were “sincere in wanting to talk to him” or “just trying to figure out a way to create a spectacle,” Carter said he thought it was “a combination of both.”
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[1] Url:
https://thecurrentga.org/2025/03/24/amid-growing-unease-in-his-backyard-u-s-rep-buddy-carter-holds-telephone-town-hall/
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