U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, both South Florida Democrats, spent part of this week’s congressional recess doing something many of their colleagues shied away from: meeting constituents in town hall meetings in their districts.
“I call it a family conversation, because when you have family conversations, people are brutally honest, and some of them are yelling,” Cherfilus-McCormick said Friday. “Not only does the district, my district, prefer and want town halls, they feel like that is their opportunity to let out their frustration. At this point, they’re demanding town halls in person, and they’re demanding more action.”
In-person town hall meetings were once regular occurrences. Members of Congress would tout an accomplishment or two, hand out some brochures for people to take home, and take questions from the audience.
They were, truth be told, often dull.
Now, in an era of rage-fueled politics, they’re often places where people vent their frustrations at the party in power.
“I think the more people are watching these town halls on TV, the more that they’re trending, the more people are having the expectation to be part of the conversation,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a telephone interview.
With many people angry about the rapid termination of government programs and firing of employees by President Donald Trump, and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s DOGE effort to slash government, town halls have become flash points, especially for Republicans.
They are also increasingly rare.
Republican lawmakers have encountered so many constituents yelling at them over Trump-Musk-DOGE moves that House Speaker Mike Johnson and the chair of the National Republican campaign organization for House races urged their lawmakers to stop having in-person town halls. DOGE is the widely used acronym for the effort to end federal programs and fire employees that Trump and Musk call the Department of Government Efficiency.
Democrats have responded by holding their own town-hall-style events or protests in districts represented by Republicans, aiming to portray majority party lawmakers as afraid of encountering the voters.
“Republicans know their policies are unpopular — that’s why they’re afraid to face the people they’re supposed to represent. While they hide, we’re stepping up to take the fight to them and hear from their constituents across the state,” the Florida Democratic Party said in one of its email blasts.
And the Democratic National Committee said Friday it has launched a billboard campaign “calling out vulnerable House Republicans for being too much of a coward to face their constituents at town halls.”
The focus on the Republican, Trump-supporting House majority doesn’t mean Democrats are getting a pass. Some are encountering people pressing them to do more to oppose Trump.
“When I tell you they’re mad, they’re not just mad at Republicans, they are mad at Democrats also, because they feel like Democrats aren’t doing enough,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “And so part of my responsibility is to be there and tell them everything that we’re doing. And it’s getting lost in the media and in person. Not only do I get to give them a list of what we’re doing, but they can see that I’m actually really fighting for them.”
Cherfilus-McCormick, whose sprawling district takes in parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, held in-person town halls Monday in Royal Palm Beach, Tuesday in West Palm Beach and Wednesday in Pompano Beach. On Feb. 27, she held a town hall in Tamarac.
Frankel, whose district lies entirely in Palm Beach County, held an in-person town hall Tuesday at the Hagen Ranch Road Library, west of Delray Beach. Her previous in-person town hall was Feb. 17.
Not everyone
While the state and national Democratic parties mock Republican town halls, they weren’t scheduled by all the South Florida Democratic lawmakers’ schedules during the March 13-23 House recess.
That frustrates Hillary Dougherty, of Pompano Beach, who said she and many others would have attended a town hall if her member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, held any.
“His constituents are scared,” she said. “I’m a single mother. I have to keep a roof over their head. I have parents who are seniors who live in Broward and have to rely on Social Security.
“It would be really great if the person we voted for and we elected to represent us from Broward County in D.C. would let us know what they’re doing there. We’re looking for information from the horse’s mouth if you will. It’s a very confusing time,” Dougherty said.
Besides northern and eastern Broward, Moskowitz’s district includes part of southern Palm Beach County.
Dougherty, who is a Broward Democratic Party precinct committeewoman and a Florida Democratic Party state committeewoman, said when she called the congressman’s office to ask about a town hall, “The person who answered said he’s still not planning any.”
Moskowitz’s spokesperson declined to comment this week on Moskowitz’s town hall plans — whether he was conducting any, either in person or by phone — and when he last held an in-person town hall.
On Friday morning, Moskowitz was posting on social media — to shame U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., for not holding any town halls.
One Moskowitz post had six chicken emojis and “Comer” on a repost of a news account about a protest outside a Comer’s district office at which people said the Republican was too chicken to have a town hall. Moskowitz also posted an image of a man (with Comer’s head added) riding a giant chicken.
Moskowitz has a combative relationship with Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee. During one exchange at a 2023 committee hearing, Moskowitz questioned Comer’s ethics, and the chairman, evidently referring to Moskowitz’s blue suit, responded that, “You look like a smurf.”
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents southern and western Broward and is the longest serving Democrat in the Florida delegation, used to hold in-person town halls all the time. She hasn’t done so since 2018, preferring different kinds of large-scale and smaller events to interact with constituents.
In 2009 and 2010, when Republicans were unhappy over the Obamacare health law and the tea party movement was gaining momentum, protesters started disrupting Wasserman Schultz’s traditional, in-person town halls — the same way Republicans are finding their town halls disrupted today.
“The political environment has changed tremendously,” said Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University. “I don’t expect town halls to remain in the same form as they did in the past.
“Town halls serve a function of gathering members of the community in one spot so they could discuss an issue. We have replaced that with the virtual town hall 24/7. So there’s less need to get everyone in the same room and hear from the representative and have them answer questions at once.”
Telephone town halls
Wasserman Schultz now holds virtual or telephone town halls. In an email, she touted their wide reach of telephone town halls, “with the most recent one last month reaching 6,000 constituents by phone. I look to host more in the coming months.”
“I’m always aggressively out and about year-round. Every week when I’m home, I meet with constituents in large forums and take questions from countless people in senior centers, schools, union halls, or at community events. I constantly interact with everyone in my community, in person, by text, or through social and traditional media,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Frankel also held a telephone town hall on Feb. 10 and Cherfilus-McCormick’s most recent one was on March 13.
And U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat who represents part of South Broward and Miami-Dade County, has one planned for Wednesday, when the House is back in session.
She’s bringing together a range of legal and policy experts to discuss “recent Republican actions” on deportations, education and what may be coming for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Cherfilus-McCormick said in-person town halls are a good way to stay in touch during the three weeks a month when House sessions have her in Washington, D.C.
But, she said, they produce a different kind of interaction with constituents.
During and especially after in-person town halls, Cherfilus-McCormick said people approach her and have “deep conversations — I’m pregnant. I just got fired. I have an attorney. I’m trying to get reinstated. … Whereas when I do tele-town halls, no one tells me those personal stories. No one is coming to you in tears, so I feel like there was kind of a disconnect.”
Those stories — and what else she’s hearing from constituents — stay private. Cherfilus-McCormick’s in-person town halls are closed to news reporters. Having “no cameras,” she said, results in “a lot more transparent conversations.” People tell the congresswoman that “I don’t want to be on camera because I don’t want to risk retaliation.”
‘We want a town hall’
U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican who represents northern Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties, had a different kind of interaction with constituents during the congressional recess.
Television news reports and videos posted on social media by Democrats — and on Mast’s own account — showed several hundred people protesting in Stuart on March 14, demanding that he hold a town hall meeting.
Protesters, who marched several blocks from the Lyric Theater to Mast’s district office, chanted “do your job,” “vote him out,” and “we want a town hall.”
Mast didn’t comply with the demand for a town hall. But he arrived on a motorcycle, and sometimes smiled as he mixed it up and was jeered by some in the crowd. “I heard they were going to be here. Was happy to come answer questions,” he said.
“I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why I showed up here … because I want to talk to them,” Mast said.
He refuted some of the protesters’ claims about the recently passed measure to keep the government funded through Sept. 30. He and all but one House Republican voted for it and all but one House Democrat voted against it.
Mast asserted the funding bill would be good for Medicare — and suggested they direct their ire elsewhere. “No Democrats voted for it. You all should head down to Lois Frankel’s office,” he said at one point.
Representatives of his office didn’t respond to a request for comment about past or future town hall plans, and a search for “town hall” on his website doesn’t show anything recent.
Politics
Foreman, the Barry University political scientist, said town halls are worthwhile even though people now “have immediate outlets to share their frustrations or try to reach their representative’s office. We don’t need to wait for a town hall to do it.
“They’re a great way to communicate with the public, with people who agree with you or disagree with you. And that should be a primary part of a representative’s job, to attend meetings and make time and space to engage in forums with the public,” he said.
But there are potential downsides. For some lawmakers, he said, there may be more risk than reward from a town hall if the enduring image is a widely shared gotcha moment.
Dougherty said she thinks not holding town halls is a political mistake. She’d like to hear Moskowitz — “because we know him to be a good leader, a good Democrat” — offer his perspective on what’s happening in Washington, D.C., and explain what he’s doing.
“It’s shocking because he’s got a heck of a race coming up in 2026 where he’s going to need his base to support him,” Dougherty said.
Moskowitz is one of 26 names on the National Republican Congressional Committee list of Democrats the party hopes to defeat in 2026.
Cherfilus-McCormick said her constituents appreciate the in-person contact, but she said she couldn’t say if that would be true for other members of Congress who aren’t holding town halls. “They know their districts better than anyone else,” she said. “Maybe their district prefers something else.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.