How Mark Sanford is handling wrathful voters at his town halls. – Slate – Slate Magazine

Rep. Mark Sanford waits for his introduction during a town hall meeting March 18 in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

BLUFFTON, South CarolinaRep. Mark Sanford is a rare sort. Hes the first politician Ive ever met to insist that a reporter speak with constituents at his events who strongly disagree with him.

Jim Newell is a Slate staff writer.

There were many of those to be found on Tuesday morning, as the conservative congressman and former governor held a series of public events in his low country coastal district that became cathartic anti-Republican therapy sessions. Oddly, Sanford seemed fine with it. He seemed to welcome it. But to what end?

At a Coffee with Your Congressman event at the Plantation Caf and Deli on Hilton Head Island, constituents who showed up conveyed to Sanford one concern after another, typically from a liberalor at least antithis-Congressperspective. Usually in these politely challenging environments, the members press people would try to distract reporters from visible dissent. Instead, after about five minutes of a conversation I would be having with one angry constituent, Sanford himself would seek me out and recommend that I talk to another person who mostly disagreed with him and everything he stands for.

You should talk to Alexisshes with Indivisible, Sanford said, referring to the anti-Trump pressure network that organizes town hall protests and other #Resistance activities. Indeed, Alexis King was a member and spokeswoman for the low country chapter of Indivisible whos lived in Hilton Head for most of her life, is frightened by Donald Trump, and disagrees with her congressman about most things.

I was pretty much telling him about the stuff I sit up and think about at 3 in the morning, that you wish you had a chance to say, she said. I just said it, so he can know how his constituents actually feel. She said she understood that she may not be able to move him on health care or Planned Parenthood. She was hopeful, though, that she could convince him to speak out against immigration raids. Im just feeling him out, she said. Like all of Sanfords constituents I spoke with, she could at least respect the accessibility of her Freedom Caucus congressman. It gives you the luxury of spending a face-to-face session feeling him out, knowing that youll get another opportunity later.

After my chat with King, Sanford came back and told me I should speak to Linda over here, whos lived in Hilton Head since 2013. Linda Schilder, whos somewhere between a Democrat and independent, said that she had told Sanford she wants to see more bipartisan collaboration in Congress. She also brought up gun control and how she wants more restrictions on handguns and semi-automatic weapons (even as a supporter of hunting and recreational shooting).

She said Sanford responded that a shotgun is a semi-automatic weapon. It is hard to move him on his Second Amendment convictions, and she was disappointed.

Sanford later insisted I speak with Cheri Gould, a Hilton Head resident who brought her daughter and had, in Sanfords words, a lot to say about health care. Again: When a Republican congressman is urging you to talk to someone in this manner, you suspect that hes directing you to, say, an Americans for Prosperity or Heritage Foundation official dressed in an everyday American costume.

This was not who Cheri Gould was. She had been to many of Sanfords town halls and relayed to me what she had just said to him. Health care coverage should be for everybody, she said. Gould noted that both she and her daughter have pre-existing conditions. Though theyre covered by her husbands employer insurance now, Gould is certain that deregulated, private individual insurance cant do the jobbecause it didnt work before the Affordable Care Act. She had just passed along these concerns to her congressman.

[Sanford] has had at least a half-dozen or more of these town halls that are heavily weighted to health care, and the feedback and the polling says people want what essentially looks like universal coverage, she said. Yet he and the Republicans are working to take that away. And I dont understand that disparity.

Sanford, she said, told her that health coverage needs to be sustainable, as well as bogus stories about how, with a European- or Canadian- style health care system, some procedures wouldnt be covered and there would be long wait times for specialists. She pointed out that we already have these exact problems with the American-style health care system. Its a false argument.

By this point, Sanford had just left the caf for a town hall in Sun City, a retirement community about 20 miles or so inland. A typical congressmans staff might have given me false directions to the event that stranded me somewhere in a low country marsh. (Scratch thata typical congressman wouldnt have an in-person town hall to begin with.)

Sanford had told me to be sure to leave myself 30 minutes to get there.

The first question that Sanford got at his Sun City town hall went as follows: How do I explain to my children and grandchildren that we have an adulterer, cheat, and liar as our president and congressman?

When the gentleman repeated his question much more loudly and someone from across the room screamed at him to sit down and be quiet, the gentleman flipped a middle finger across the room. Security came to escort the man out of the town hall, but Sanford came over and told everyone to cool down. No one really cooled down, though, during the roughly 90-minute event that Sanford would describe afterward as invigorating.

There are a lot of retirees in the Hilton Head area. And a lot of those retirees, judging by nearly every loud accent I heard at the town hallconducted in an outdoor pavilion, surrounded by tennis courts and various lawn gameswere from New York and New Jersey. Early on, as things were getting rowdy, Sanford joked that this isnt a New Jersey town hall, this is a South Carolina town hallas in, lets be respectful to each other. Some variation of the shout DONT PUT DOWN NEW JERSEY could be heard throughout the rest of the event.

Why does Mark Sanford put himself through this, when so many of his colleagues are running for the hills?

The rowdiness manifested itself in other ways. Sanford, for example, was asked to repudiate either Jesus Christ or atheist free-market objectivist author Ayn Rand since it was contradictory to idolize both. (Sanford acknowledged that Rand could go astray but still recommended reading Atlas Shrugged.)

Most of the questions, though, were about health care and started from the tenet that Sanfords beliefs on the subject were wrong. He had one get-out-of-jail card available to him that he pulled multiple times: that he was one of three Republicans to have voted against the American Health Care Act. (He did not point out that he voted against the AHCA in the Budget Committee because it wasnt conservative enough or that he waited to vote last, once the bills approval was assured.) Its an excuse that more endangered members, especially those who did vote for it in committee as loyal team players, wish they could have.

Should everyone in this country have health care? someone asked Sanford near the end.

I think its an individual choice, he said. Perhaps the only louder boos than the ones that followed came when he suggested that those frozen out from insurance should look to their communities, charities, and churches for assistance.

When someone asked him when he thought we will heave health care for all people in this countrya question that earned a standing ovationSanford replied that the answer is that I dont have the answer.

What he said next was odd to hear from the free-market true believer, whod endured hours of verbal abuse defending his ideology that morning: I wouldnt be surprised if we end up with a bifurcated plan, something closer to what they have in Great Britain, where you have your base level of benefits and if you want bells and whistles, you can come back and buy more. That sounds like the reluctant acknowledgement of a conservative whos seen what happens politically when free marketers even attempt to put their hands on health care.

Why does Mark Sanford put himself through this, when so many of his colleagues are running for the hills? Most congressional Republicans have either retreated to carefully choreographed tele-town halls or stopped giving town halls altogether. It may be that Sanford won his last election by 22 points in his conservative district and views the angriest of his constituentsthose who might join Indivisible and head to a town hallas a rounding error. Or maybe he just feeds on the abuse. Hes seen worse in his career but nevertheless stayed in politics for more.

Top Comment

I met with his chief of staff shortly after the election on behalf of our local chapter of Indivisible. Not only did Sanford agree that we needed a live town hall, he actually asked Indivisible to host it. More...

I always did these open-door office hours in front of, like, a Walmart, he said after the town hall. He was eating a cheeseburger at his next event, a constituent roundtable at Five Guys, with more constituents who had more opinions about how he was wrong on health care and taxes.

It helped you, he said of these Walmart events. Not any one conversation, but by the time youd have 50, youd pick up certain currents, where people are coming from. By that 50-person standard, he certainly picked up a current on Tuesday. Will it make a difference when he returns to Washington? Or is it abuse for abuses sake?

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How Mark Sanford is handling wrathful voters at his town halls. - Slate - Slate Magazine