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Outside the Parkersburg & Wood County Library, about a dozen people held signs up on a muggy late August morning demanding their Congressman show up and answer for his votes.
Inside the library, a staff member for Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., sat patiently as people came in with their concerns, asking for help with accessing veterans’ benefits, Social Security and Medicare.
But the freshman Congressman was nowhere to be found.
“We’re here because we don’t have a town hall to come to,” said Trish Pritchard, an activist with the Mid-Ohio Valley Indivisible, a progressive organization straddling the West Virginia-Ohio border.
Ever since President Donald Trump started cutting federal programs and jobs, lawmakers in Congress have been warned not to hold town hall meetings. Leadership in Congress has doubled down on that advice since the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.
And while Republicans in California, Nebraska and Wisconsin have bucked that trend and held contentious meetings with their constituents, West Virginia Republicans so far haven’t.
That’s despite West Virginia’s population — with nearly one-third relying on Medicaid and more than 200,000 on food stamps — potentially facing more impacts from the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill than other states.
Mountain State Spotlight asked representatives from Moore’s office if he’d be having a town hall meeting during the long August break when lawmakers flee hot and muggy Washington D.C. to go back to their districts.
His office did not reply.
Back in Parkersburg, Pritchard said holding town hall meetings comes with the territory.
“That’s their job. That’s the most important part of their job is to listen to their constituents,” she said.
Neither the offices of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito nor Sen. Jim Justice responded to an inquiry.
But their colleague across the aisle, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., held a town hall in Lenore, West Virginia. Afterward, at a packed rally in the Charleston Civic Center, Sanders said he was there to hear the concerns of people in the state.
“What is the senator from the great state of Vermont doing in the great State of West Virginia?” Sanders asked. “I happen not to believe in blue state, red state nonsense.”
The criticisms over the lack of town halls have also come from some conservatives. Political commentator T.J. Meadows penned a column for MetroNews that criticized how ugly town halls have become in America, while ultimately concluding that politicians should embrace them.
But one of the state’s federal representatives thinks otherwise.
This week, Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., took a tour of the Huntington central kitchen for Healthy Kids Inc., a start-up company that makes healthy meals for childcare programs that include at least one item from a West Virginia farmer.
The tour, put on by the company and its partner organizations, the West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition and the Benedum Foundation, was an effort to convince the Congresswoman to vote in favor of increasing the line item for the Appalachian Regional Commission, which provided seed money for the project.
Miller indicated she’d be in favor of increasing the funding.
After the tour, Mountain State Spotlight asked Miller if she would be holding a town hall meeting during the summer break.
“I’ve never found them to be really productive,” she said. “I am in the community every day. I meet with people all the time. I’m pretty accessible, and on weekends, you can always find me at a ball field.”
Reach reporter Tre Spencer at tre@mountainstatespotlight.org
