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Where’s Denver?: Riggleman refutes claims he hasn’t been accessible

Denver Riggleman hasn’t hosted an in-person town hall since taking office, but says he’s made himself accessible in other ways. (Photo courtesy of Denver Riggleman)

Amid complaints from local residents that he hasn’t made himself available to constituents, Congressman Denver Riggleman has scheduled his first in-person town hall meeting for August 28—in Danville.

The Republican representative of Virginia’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives took office in January, when he published a pledge that said he would “conduct town halls throughout the district” once he was settled in. Seven months into his term, Riggleman has only held one town hall, by phone, but says he’s met with constituents in other ways.

“I don’t know if you want to call them town halls, but we certainly have been doing listening tours with every type of constituency we have, so I think the town halls, listening tours, roundtables, all those are pretty much the same thing,” Riggleman says. He says he plans to hold a town hall in Charlottesville “in the next four to five months.”

Craig DuBose is a Charlottesville resident who grew disgruntled with Riggleman’s lack of town hall meetings. The carpenter, who similarly pursued Riggleman’s predecessor, Tom Garrett, decided to organize a “constituent day” with other voters on August 26 at Riggleman’s office.

The event was promoted by Indivisible Charlottesville—an anti-Trump group that advocates for holding public officials accountable—with the idea that residents could visit Riggleman’s local office to voice their concerns about what’s going on in the district. The congressman says he wasn’t aware of the constituent day prior to it happening.

“How many times do we have to show and ask you to respond to this before you either respond to it or tell us you’re not going to?” DuBose says. He started making regular visits to the office in July with a group of fellow residents to try and speak with Riggleman, with no success.

Fourteen people marked on Facebook that they stopped by the office Monday, and 37 said they were interested. A Riggleman staffer confirmed multiple people had visited that morning but wouldn’t disclose a number.

As it turns out, the congressman was in fact in Charlottesville on Monday, meeting with local farmers and lawmakers at Roslyn Farm. He also attended a roundtable at the crop processing company Nutrien Ag Solutions in South Hill. Richard Fox, the owner of Roslyn Farm, says local farmers feel like their voices are heard by Riggleman, who co-owns a distillery with his wife Christine in Afton.

“Over the last couple years, building those relationships with local farmers has definitely helped him just hit the ground running,” Fox says. “At the end of the day, you can talk with Denver and he actually knows what you’re saying. He can talk some farm stuff and he gets it just because he’s at least had to be on the other end of the commodity industry.”

In his weekly newsletter sent to subscribers July 26, Riggleman wrote that he was “excited to visit with constituents” during Congress’ yearly August recess. He spent a majority of the first two weeks of the month visiting facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border and taking a congressional delegation trip to Israel before making a business tour across the district.

“It’s just not true, I mean that’s ridiculous,” Riggleman says of those claiming their voices aren’t being heard. “Instead of screaming all the time, just maybe look at what I’m doing…I think most of the people complaining are just specifically in Charlottesville with a certain group of people, and that’s fine. But don’t be disingenuous. That’s just absurd.”

Paul Bostrom is a Charlottesville resident who visited Riggleman’s office as part of the constituent day. He hoped to ask Riggleman about his stance on some of President Trump’s recent comments. Although he can’t attend Riggleman’s town hall in Danville on Wednesday, because it’s two hours away, Bostrom wants to hear from Riggleman directly about Trump and some of the issues pertinent to the district.

“I want to hear more from his mouth about what’s going on in the district and what’s going on in Congress,” he says.

With no firm date set for a town hall in Charlottesville, Riggleman invites city residents to follow him on social media and subscribe to his newsletter in order to stay informed on what he’s doing in Congress. DuBose, who is an active commenter on Riggleman’s Facebook page, claims some of his comments have disappeared from the congressman’s official Facebook page, an allegation Riggleman denies. He stresses that constituents can schedule meetings with him at his local offices, but that representing such a large district pulls him in many different directions.

“I think what people need to understand is we have a district that’s 10,000 square miles, 21 counties, and Charlottesville specifically is 1/1,000th of the district geographically,” Riggleman says. “So it’s great that they’re planning a constituent day, but I’m meeting with constituents in multiple counties every month. It’s a challenge with a district bigger than New Jersey [and] hopefully people understand that.”

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Unfriended: Garrett staffer calls cops on constituent

Craig DuBose was surprised to learn he’s been reported to U.S. Capitol Police for allegedly making threats to Congressman Tom Garrett’s staff, and says it’s an attempt to intimidate. Photo by Eze Amos

Craig DuBose likes to let his 5th District congressman know how he feels about issues, and he regularly posts comments on Tom Garrett’s Facebook page—until he discovered he’d been blocked December 7.

DuBose says he called Garrett’s Washington office the next day, and was transferred to communications director Matt Missen, who told him he’d violated the terms of service for the Facebook page.

“He refused to provide any specific instances of the supposed violations except to say that I had used profanity,” says DuBose. “That’s absolutely not true.”

DuBose says he asked to speak to the chief of staff, and Missen refused to transfer him—or take a message. After reminding Missen that case law in Virginia makes it illegal for elected officials to prohibit constituents from engaging on Facebook, DuBose, who says he’s called his congressman’s office 150 times this year, hung up.

Five minutes later he called back to comment on health care, and was immediately transferred to Missen, who refused to take his message and hung up on him, says DuBose.

He called Garrett’s Charlottesville office to leave a message about health care and asked the person answering to pass along a message to the D.C. office that he was filing a complaint with the ACLU that the office was violating Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, the federal court case that ruled public officials who conduct public business on social media accounts can’t block constituents, even if they’re frequent flyers.

Five minutes later, says DuBose, Missen phoned back and said he was reporting DuBose to Capitol Police for “harassing” Garrett’s office.

Missen confirms the Facebook blocking and calling the cops on DuBose.

“He violated the social media policy,” says the spokesperson. “He repeatedly cyberstalked members of our staff and made inflammatory comments.”

Missen alleges DuBose threatened him. “He’s going to be getting a visit from Capitol Police,” he says.

While Missen would not disclose the threats, he says, “We do not tolerate that when cyberstalking and threatening staff.”

And he makes a suggestion: “When you speak to Mr. DuBose, I think he should be a little more careful because there’s an active investigation.”

“That’s interesting,” says DuBose. “I wonder what the threats were. It’s clearly intimidation.”

After pondering the cyberstalking allegation, DuBose says he went to the Facebook page of Garrett’s former communications director, who had posted a photo of his girlfriend wearing an American flag bikini and scarf.

“I sent an email to Tom Garrett after he made a speech on the floor of the House about honoring the flag, and said, ‘Maybe you’d like to speak to members of your staff about honoring the flag,’” says DuBose, who disagrees that commenting about a public Facebook page constitutes cyberstalking.

A U.S. Capitol Police spokesperson refused to provide more detail. “We do not comment on active investigations,” says Eva Malecki.

DuBose is not the only local who’s been blocked on Garrett’s social media accounts. Nest Realty’s Jim Duncan was blocked on Twitter earlier this year. Garrett’s office said it was the congressman’s personal account, on which he can block whomever he pleases.

Duncan says that reasoning is “BS” because Garrett uses that account “officially as well.”

Leslie Mehta, legal director for ACLU of Virginia, likens social media to a town hall, and blocking constituents from commenting and seeing what an elected official is saying “violates the First Amendment and the ability to see what your government is doing.”

The civil liberties org has gotten about a dozen complaints in the past year, which points to a pattern, says Mehta. The rules aren’t entirely clear at this point, and what started as a personal account could change into a public account, she says. In its amicus brief for Davison v. Loudoun, the ACLU offers suggestions to help legislators protect rights of both the elected and citizens, she adds.

Meanwhile, DuBose is still wondering what threats he allegedly made. “The only thing I”ve ever said is that I’m committed to seeing [Garrett] is not re-elected,” says DuBose. “If that’s the case, plenty of people in the 5th District are guilty of that.”

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Where’s Tom? The case of the missing congressman

Congressman Tom Garrett’s office says with the two Facebook Live events, he’s interacted with more than 100,000 constituents in his first two months. Protesters at his office beg to differ. EZE AMOS

Craig DuBose made his appointment February 1 to meet with Congressman Tom Garrett in the congressman’s Charlottesville office March 6. Heather Rowland made hers February 10. Both constituents called to confirm their appointments before showing up at Garrett’s Berkmar Crossing office, and both were dismayed to learn Garrett wasn’t there.

“I was disappointed,” says DuBose, a carpenter. “I had taken the day off from work. It’s common courtesy to notify if you have to cancel.”

Garrett’s chief of staff, Kevin Reynolds, said it was a scheduling mistake.

Rowland says she confirmed her meeting with Garrett the morning of March 6. Reynolds told her that, too, was a mistake, and she should have been told “or with an aide,” she says.

Rowland is a volunteer counselor who helps people sign up for the Affordable Care Act, and that’s why she and a couple of colleagues wanted to meet with Garrett. “I felt we had insights about constituents who had benefited from the Affordable Care Act,” she says, noting that 36,000 people in the 5th District signed up in 2016.

“They’re good upstanding members of the community who happen to not earn very much,” she says. Garrett is critical of Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan, and Rowland describes Garrett’s health care vision as basically a health savings account. “If you have no money, there’s no way you’ll have money for an HSA,” she adds.

Meeting with Reynolds was not the same as meeting with the congressman, she says. “He’s taking your message but not answering your questions,” she explains.

DuBose says he called several times the week before to confirm the meeting, and when he showed up at the district office, he was told Garrett had other meetings in Nelson County, where he met with the Farm Bureau. “If these other meetings were planned and I called last week to confirm mine, they had a half dozen times to let me know,” he says. “That’s just bad form.”

Rowland and DuBose weren’t the only constituents stood up by the scheduling snafu. Some members of Indivisible Charlottesville, which has regularly scheduled protests at Garrett’s office and held a town hall meeting without him February 26, also had appointments that day.

Indivisible Charlottesville lies “perpetually,” Garrett told the Lynchburg News-Advance. “They’re like the kid in school who nobody talks to because every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie.”

“They should get their story straight before calling community groups liars,” says Indivisible’s David Singerman.

Garrett stands by the characterization. According to his office, Reynolds has reached out to several Indivisible leaders, including Singerman on March 6, and says they refused to meet with him or, in another case, to take phone calls from Garrett.

Garrett spokesperson Andrew Griffin also challenges Indivisible claims of wanting “civil dialogue” and “nonviolence,” and says Reynolds was called an “S.O.B.” by a bullhorn-wielding Indivisible Nelson member on March 6, and another has “wished death” on Garrett in an online forum.

“Our staff and congressman are routinely cursed, threatened and mocked by people from this group despite their wish for ‘civil dialogue,’” says Griffin.

Singerman recalls that years ago, when he was an intern in the House of Representatives, congressmen considered district work meetings “sacrosanct.” He says, “I’m pretty shocked Garrett would stand up his constituents that way.”

He adds, “It’s a bad precedent with what it says about Garrett’s commitment to the 5th District.”

Or maybe it’s not so much the 5th District for the Republican congressman as it is Dem-leaning Charlottesville, suggests DuBose. “They’ve made the calculation they really don’t have to deal with people in Charlottesville.”

Garrett is not the first congressman named Tom who has been called upon to face angry constituents. Tom Perriello was elected in 2008 and his support for the Affordable Care Act cost him a second term.

“I think you have a moral obligation to hear from your constituents—even the ones you don’t agree with,” says Perriello. “It’s not that hard. You show up and listen. They’re your boss.”

Perriello had “a couple dozen” town halls and “stayed until the last question was answered,” even if it was past midnight, he says.

Garrett has scheduled a March 31 town hall at UVA’s Batten School, where 135 tickets will be distributed by lottery. An earlier March 13 event was changed because of yet another scheduling conflict.

“It seems pretty pitiful to me,” says Perriello. “You can do both—have a large town hall and a smaller event. The only reason to restrict attendance is you don’t want to answer constituents.”

However, Griffin cites safety concerns—and the riot at the University of California-Berkeley because of an invitation to former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos—as the reason for having the Batten School host the town hall.

“The issue with a spirited crowd is the potential for violence, intimidation and disenfranchisement by members of a greater, more spirited crowd,” he says. “We are adamant that we will not subject any constituent, regardless of their political support, to this potential scenario.”

Perriello offers advice to congressmen considering the repeal and replacement of Obamacare: “This is not a game. This is people’s lives.” And that requires “standing in front of them and hearing their stories,” he says. “Sometimes you shouldn’t be quite so afraid to do the right thing.”

And while DuBose and others didn’t get to meet with the current 5th District representative March 6, Garrett did make it to Charlottesville March 11 to meet with the Albemarle County Republican Committee at its monthly Sam’s Kitchen breakfast.

Correction 12:37pm: Griffin was misidentified in one reference.