Cory Gardner's Lakewood Town Hall Was a Shit Show
At his Lakewood town hall on Tuesday, August 15, Senator Cory Gardner saw a lot of red.
Before the event, audience members were handed signs that had nothing more than a red thumbs-down and a green thumbs-up on either side, and the crowd of mostly Gardner detractors waved the red finger, so to speak, at Gardner with reckless abandon at any mention of his conservative leanings or Donald Trump.
Signs weren't Gardner's only problem yesterday, when the senator held three town halls along the Front Range. Despite a moderator at the one at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood repeatedly asking members of the crowd to remain respectful and lower their voices, hecklers interrupted Gardner nearly every time he tried to answer a question. A man was even led off by police after yelling "Fucking whore!" several times at a woman who'd asked him to quiet down. Spats broke out in the audience, with Gardner supporters telling his detractors to "shut up," and vice versa. The fights even spilled out into the parking lot after the meeting's end. It was like a really bad traffic jam, and Gardner was the Civic that crapped out in the fast lane.
In media coverage of the town hall, as well as at the gathering itself, hecklers drowned out the voices of genuinely curious and concerned constituents. A woman who identified herself as a rape victim asked the senator how he explained to his three daughters his support of a president who has boasted about committing an assault against a woman. Another woman, voice shaking, said that Trump's strong rhetoric about North Korea scared her, and she asked Gardner, chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, if he would support a Democratic bill that would strip Trump of unilateral power to launch nuclear weapons. Gardner's answer didn't offer her much comfort: He told the woman he wouldn't strip the president of his authority in that way. But at least he answered honestly.
Read more: http://www.westword.com/news/senator-cory-gardner-holds-first-in-person-town-hall-in-over-a-year-9375680
