Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks informed Johnson County Republicans in an August assembly that she’ll hold town corridor conferences “when hell freezes over.”
The Republican, who represents one of many nation’s most competitive House districts in southeastern Iowa, has confronted questions for months over when she’ll hold a public town corridor after promising to take action in April.
And within the assembly with the Johnson County Republicans of Iowa — which was later posted on YouTube by the county celebration, the place it went largely unnoticed on the time — she was blunt, saying she’s already being hounded over Medicaid cuts within the GOP’s massive government funding and policy bill.
“You know, I don’t have to hold a town hall so you can come and yell at me,” stated Miller-Meeks, who received by 799 votes in 2024 and faces a probable rematch subsequent 12 months with Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan.
“You can yell at me at the county fair — and you did! And you did. They did,” she stated. “You know, you yell at me in church, you yell at me at the county fair, I’m out in public all the damn time. Someone yelled at me at the speedway.”
Miller-Meeks added: “You have plenty of opportunities to yell at me and tell me I should be ashamed of myself, and by the way, I am not.”
Miller-Meeks’ feedback got here amid scrutiny over her and plenty of different House Republicans refusing to hold public, in-person town halls. Party leaders, together with the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, have suggested in opposition to town halls after sturdy opposition to the GOP’s spending cuts burst into view at some town halls this spring.
Miller-Meeks pointed to impartial Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticizing her and different swing district Republicans over their votes for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“We took the hard votes on reconciliation. We’ve been beat to crap over what we did on Medicaid. You know because you all have seen it,” she stated.
Miller-Meeks informed the Johnson County Republicans that she was being pressed on when she’d hold a town corridor by Tom Barton, a politics reporter for The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids. “When hell freezes over,” she stated.
Miller-Meeks didn’t instantly reply to NCS’s request for touch upon her August remarks to Johnson County Republicans. But she did defend herself final week, telling the Gazette’s Barton, “Every time I walk around Iowa — every meeting that I go to, every rotary I attend, every county fair I go to — I am out in the public. I am out in the open, and I can answer anyone’s questions they have,” Miller-Meeks stated.
She informed Barton that Democrats urgent GOP incumbents to hold town halls simply need “other people like-minded to scream and yell at people so they can videotape screaming and yelling at people.”
“And even when we were doing our press conference at the State Fair, people screamed and yelled and videotaped their screaming and yelling,” she informed the newspaper. “And then other people had, you know, reasonable questions that they wanted answers to, and we were able to do that. So more than happy to meet with individuals, as I do always when I’m in district.”