WEST JORDAN – It’s a town hall meeting… of sorts.
Utah’s Fourth District Representative Mia Love opens her office for small groups of constituents to speak to her directly. Even though this method was designed to diminish some of the noise that can come with a large town hall meeting, some of these smaller encounters still became contentious.
Love says she believes any kind of open meeting she can have with the public is a good thing. But, she says there are some drawbacks to having thousands of people shouting in an auditorium. Love claims this may be a better format for some constituents to have a chance to be heard. “They feel like they have more access to me instead of in a big hall where they don’t get the chance to get their questions answered or get the chance to voice their opinion about a specific issue,” Love says.
She also says smaller meetings, like the ones she held in her West Jordan office are easier to secure. Love says, “[We want to] make sure that people who come in, not just me, but people who come in to speak to me feel like they’re in a safe environment.”
However, not everyone was a fan of this new method. One of the people who came to the first meeting was Tom Taylor, who is running for the Fourth Congressional District Seat. He pressed her about what she would do in the hypothetical scenario of President Trump firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller during his probe into possible meddling from Russia during the last presidential election. Taylor says, “We might as well have a town hall where more people can be heard.”
Still, Love says this method of meeting constituents has been beneficial for her, and she plans to have more public meetings in the future. “This, and what I have been doing, has been really good dialogue back and forth and has allowed me to expand my knowledge and be able to increase and raise Utah’s voice,” she says.
