July 6, 2017

Holdout Republican Senators Are Being Embraced By Home-State Crowds for Opposing Trumpcare

Others are staying far away.

With the memory of Spring’s rowdy town hall events fresh in their minds, Senate Republicans largely appear to be dodging public events with voters—many of whom are expressing anger over the party’s plans to kill Obamacare—while back home for the current recess. 

Only a handful participated in their local Fourth of July parades, historically friendly ground for lawmakers returning to their home states. The common thread among these lawmakers? Their criticism of their own party’s legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. 

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), who has said she would oppose the Senate-generated Better Care Reconciliation Act barring significant amendments, was one of the Republican senators to appear at local festivities, where she was met with appreciation.

“What I’ve been hearing the entire recess is people telling me to be strong, that they have a lot of concerns about the health care bill in the senate, they want me to keep working on it, but they don’t want me to support it in its current form,” Collins said during Tuesday’s parade in Eastport.

“Most people don’t ask ‘for or against,’ ” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another Republican senator who has signaled she may vote “no” on the bill, told the Washington Post during a Fourth of July event in Wrangell. “They just say, ‘Make sure you’re taking care of our interests.’ In fairness for those that do the ‘for or against,’ everybody is pretty much [saying] they don’t think this is good for us.”

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who in April faced hostile constituents over his position on heath care and Planned Parenthood funding, also made the rare Fourth of July appearance, days after breaking with Republicans by announcing he too did not support the current form of the bill. (The Nevada senator’s seat is considered to be one of the most endangered in the 2018 midterm elections; pressure on Heller grew Thursday, when Democrat Rep. Jacky Rosen officially announced her bid to challenge his Senate seat.) 

Apart from participating in parades, only four Republican senators scheduled town hall events during the recess—Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)—according to the Town Hall Project. So far, they’ve been greeted by protesters. That’s unlikely to change.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate