Gabrielle Giffords urges lawmakers: ‘Have some courage,’ meet voters
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who survived a near-fatal assassination attempt at a 2011 constituent event near Tucson, on Thursday urged members of Congress not to abandon the traditional town-hall meeting in the face of rising opposition to President Donald Trump and his nominations and policies.
"I was shot on a Saturday morning," Giffords said in a written statement released by Americans For Responsible Solutions, the gun-control organization she and her husband, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly founded after the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting. "By Monday morning my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber — at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It's what the people deserve in a representative."
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Republicans this month have come under fire for ducking town-hall sessions. Using "tea party" tactics, liberal activists participating in the new "Indivisible" movement are hoping to put the same kind of pressure on GOP and Trump as the conservative activists put on Democrats and President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, when Republicans won back control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Earlier this week, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, cited the attack on Giffords, which killed a federal judge and five other people, as a reason not to hold the town-hall meetings that liberal activists and others across the country have been clamoring for.
"Town halls and countless constituent meetings were a hallmark of my tenure in Congress. It's how I was able to serve the people of southern Arizona," Giffords said. "I believed that listening to my constituents was the most basic and core tenant of the job I was hired to do."
Even before the mass shooting at her "Congress on Your Corner" event outside the Tucson-area Safeway grocery store, Giffords had at least one nerve-rattling experience at a public appearance.
In August 2009 — when "tea party" conservatives were swarming congressional town halls the same way that anti-Trump liberals are doing today — a man brought, and subsequently dropped, a firearm at a Giffords "Congress on Your Corner" event in Douglas.
At the time, Giffords, who served in the House from 2007 to 2012, publicly downplayed the incident.
"When you represent a district that includes the home of the O.K. Corral and Tombstone, 'the Town Too Tough to Die,' nothing's a surprise out in Cochise County," Giffords told The Arizona Republic at the time.
Despite "some pretty disparaging comments" made by the man, Giffords said, "at no point did I ever feel in danger and at no point did I ever feel there was a problem."
But last year, Barber, her district director who later was elected to her House seat, described the Douglas gun episode as unsettling.
"Gabby is the kind of person who just toughed it out and we did, up to a point," Barber told The Republic last year.
Nevertheless, Giffords continues to appear in public in her new role as a gun-control activist, saying she has held more than 50 public events during the past year.
"Many of the members of Congress who are refusing to hold town halls and listen to their constituents concerns are the very same politicians that have opposed common-sense gun violence prevention policies and have allowed the Washington gun lobby to threaten the safety of law enforcement and everyday citizens in our schools, businesses, places of worship, airports, and movie theaters," Giffords said in her statement.
"To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls."
Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.