Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upset his supporters on Monday night after failing to attend a town hall in his home state at the last minute, ABC News reports.
Schumer told the organizers of the town hall, which was scheduled almost a year ago, that he could not reach the synagogue in Brooklyn where the event was taking place due to an equipment problem with his small plane. He instead spent an hour answering questions from constituents via a conference call, but many at the sold-out event were not happy, and cries of “don’t phone it in,” broke out in the crowd, according to Politico.
Schumer apologized at the beginning of his conference call, The Hill reported.
"As some of you know, I fly around upstate New York in a tiny, little propeller plane, and unfortunately it ran into trouble with the fuel pump, and so we had to land in Utica," Schumer said, according to the senator’s office.
"I’m here in Griffis International Airport taking this call. I really regret missing everybody because I love talking and mingling with my constituents and even when the comments are tough, you learn, you grow. So I have no problem with passion and even frustration, 'cause I share it — both of those things. And so I suggested we do this tele-town hall meeting not as a replacement, but rather as the best substitute available at this time, because as [Council Member] Brad [Lander] said, my powers of tele-transportation are limited."
A spokesman for Schumer told The Hill the senator is working to reschedule the town hall.
One woman, Magda Aboulfadl, said she traveled 90 minutes from the North Bronx to attend the town hall, which she has never done before, because she feels “so helpless and paralyzed even to voice my resistance,” according to The New York Times.
One attendee, a longtime constituent of Schumer’s named Miriam Clark, compared Schumer to Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., the 10-term congressman unseated by progressive challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"Does he want to do this? Does he want to be Joe Crowley? He can’t show up in his own district, his own synagogue?” Clark told The Nation.
Liat Olenick, co-president of the grassroots activism group Indivisible Nation BK, told Politico: "There are thousands and thousands of people in this city who want to support him, so that he can win battles. But he’s not speaking to those people, and we want him to do that."
She added in a statement to ABC News: “Senator Schumer has not held a face to face town hall in years, and with so much at stake, from the Supreme Court vacancy to the crisis at our borders, we need to hear from him in person. Phoning it in isn’t acceptable. We demand a real town hall in New York City."
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