As November’s election draws nearer, things are getting even spicier in politics-land. The latest example comes courtesy of Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt — and he’s not even on November’s ballot.
Here’s the big news: Following seven months of weekly rallies in downtown Roanoke — during which demonstrators have repeatedly requested a face-to-face meeting, Cline has scheduled his very first town hall of 2025.
But it’s going to be darned inconvenient for constituents from Roanoke — the largest city in Virginia’s 6th Congressional District.
The event happens this evening. At rush hour. In Lexington (pop. 7,500) where roughly 1% of 6th Congressional District residents live. Cline will take the podium at 5:30 p.m. It’s scheduled to last an hour.
It’ll be in a courtroom at the Rockbridge County Courthouse, where all cellphones, cameras and recording devices are prohibited (along with firearms). Seating is limited to 120, said Michelle Trout, the county’s circuit court clerk.
Signs and noisemakers are banned from the town hall meeting.
The Rockbridge County Sheriff’s Office will provide security inside the courthouse and immediately outside it, Sheriff Tony McFaddin Jr. said. Lexington police will also be on hand outside, said police Capt. Ronald Condry. For security reasons he declined to disclose operational details.
Online reservations are required. Those must be made through the website EventBrite. And according to the congressman’s initial announcement, only residents of Lexington could sign up.
“Constituents not residing in Lexington are invited to stay tuned for an event in their locality,” the press release said.
This prompted a number of questions from yours truly to Cline’s relatively new spokesman, Zach Fulton. And unlike other recent attempts to get answers from the congressman’s Capitol Hill office, Fulton actually responded.
“All citizens from Lexington are invited to attend, and none have been turned away,” he wrote in his first reply. “The venue was not selected for attendees from outside the city of Lexington, as the Congressman plans to hold town halls across the sixth district in the coming months.”
Yippee!
On EventBrite the signup page says, “If you are not a resident of Lexington, you may receive provisional admittance. My office will notify you 24 hours prior to the event if space becomes available.”
Gene Zitver first brought the town hall meeting to my attention. He’s vice-chair of the Lexington-Rockbridge-Buena Vista Democratic Committee. He also operates “Cline Watch,” a must-read blog that bills itself as “Tracking Virginia’s Sixth District Congressman.”
Just one of Zitver’s concerns was that the online signup page included no field for attendees to indicate their locality. Considering that, he wondered how reservations could be limited to Lexington residents.
Sunday, Zitver sent an email asking if I had received the Sept. 18 announcement about the town hall. I answered no. The most recent email Fulton had sent to my inbox was Sept. 12, about Cline being appointed to a conference committee.
Turned out, Fulton later sent the town hall announcement to a general mailbox here at the newspaper that goes to nobody in particular. I hunted it down. It prompted a bunch of questions. Below are a few of those.
One: “Why has Rep. Cline scrupulously avoided holding a town hall in Roanoke, the largest city in his district, where constituents have been demonstrating every Monday since February, requesting a town hall?”
Two: “How does your office respond to critics who charge the congressman is deliberately engineering a town hall in (a) small venue with a tiny pro-Cline crowd, and the town hall reservation system seems rigged to ignore them?”
I also asked Fulton where and when Cline would hold a Roanoke town hall.
One of Cline’s fiercest local critics is Roanoke lawyer Carter Brothers. He’s among the folks who’ve gathered Mondays outside Cline’s Roanoke office — though Brothers hasn’t made it to each rally. Tentatively, Brothers is slated to address an upcoming anti-Cline rally in Roanoke in October.
“Cline is not interested in having a conversation,” Brothers told me Wednesday. “Whenever he schedules these meetings they’re not designed for people with opposing viewpoints.”
Brothers noted that many of the town-hall events listed on Cline’s calendar have been held in restaurants or other locations with limited seating and at inconvenient times for working people.
Fulton and I had an email back-and-forth that I found refreshing and unusual compared to other recent Cline spokespersons. His first reply checked in at 280 words. And strongly, he pushed back on the notion Cline has avoided Roanoke-area constituents.
“As you know, Congressman Cline has held multiple town hall meetings in each of the 22 localities in the sixth district since his election in 2018.
“Four of those have been in the City of Roanoke, and The Roanoke Times has been notified before each of them. In fact, he has held town halls in Roanoke City on December 19, 2018, on January 23, 2020, at the VFW Hall, as well as March 3, 2023, at the Golden Corral on Town Square Boulevard,” Fulton continued.
“Most recently, he held a town hall on November 25, 2024, shortly after the reelection of President Trump. That town hall was held at the New Yorker Delicatessen on Williamson Road.”
I checked that latter date — it was a Monday — then emailed Fulton back and asked if he’s aware The New Yorker is closed on Mondays.
He apologized and said that town hall actually occurred Nov. 26, not the 25th. In other words, Cline held it on Thanksgiving Tuesday, rather than Thanksgiving Monday. I’m sure that was a humdinger.
The last question was where and when will Ben Cline would hold a town hall in Roanoke? I pressed Fulton at least twice on that one.
“He looks forward to holding a fifth town hall in the City of Roanoke at a time to be determined in the future,” Fulton responded.
Perhaps the best location would be the Patrick Henry High football stadium, right? That venue can accommodate thousands. But something tells me the congressman won’t have it there.
You never know, though.
Stay tuned.
Dan Casey (540) 981-3423
dan.casey@roanoke.com
@dancaseysblog
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