First-term Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) faced boos and chants of “Four more years!” (for President Donald Trump) as she faced town halls in her district this weekend.
Slotkin was one of the “freshman seven” who signed an op-ed in the Washington Post on Sep. 24 supporting an impeachment inquiry. None of them had seen the actual evidence — the transcript (or “readout”) of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; all were willing to risk their careers, and the country, in advance of seeing the facts.
And as Slotkin found out this weekend, many of her constituents are unhappy about it. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, published a video of one exchange in Rochester, Michigan, on Friday evening:
Slotkin has also faced pushback at other recent town halls in Michigan’s eighth congressional district, the Detroit News reported Monday:
Inside the crowded gatherings, Slotkin spoke of prescription drug reform, infrastructure and education funding. But it was her recent support of an impeachment inquiry that raised a cacophony of applause, boos and mingled shouts of “Let her speak” and “Fake news.”
“I know that it’s clearly not popular,” Slotkin said Thursday in Hartland. “But I just felt compelled to do it because I just don’t know where this ends.”
For the first-term Democratic lawmaker in a Republican-leaning district, the residents’ reactions to Slotkin’s impeachment decision could make a world of difference in the upcoming 2020 race in the 8th Congressional District. Slotkin won by nearly 4 percentage points over Rep. Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, in 2018, while Trump won the district by nearly 7 percentage points in 2016.
CNN also aired footage of objections from another town hall, in Hartland Township on Thursday:
Slotkin is just the latest impeachment-supporting Democrat in a swing district to face objections from her constituents.
Politico reported Sunday that first-term Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) faces similar outrage in the sixth congressional district of Illinois, in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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