A Former Engine of the GOP — the Proverbial Town Hall Meeting — Cools Down

By JEREMY W. PETERS, NYT

WASHINGTON — Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, is no stranger to town hall meetings and their political possibilities. Four summers ago, he helped his party use them to stoke opposition to President Obama’s health care bill. Across the country, forums like his fed a budding Tea Party movement and set the stage for returning the House to Republican control in 2010.

But when Mr. Sessions returned to his Dallas-area district for the August recess this year, a pause before Congress takes up an agenda that includes immigration, government surveillance, health care and budget cuts, there was something conspicuously missing from his schedule: a town hall.

One of his constituents, Katrina Pierson, 37, who describes herself as a “conservative grass-roots volunteer” and had hoped to press Mr. Sessions on his commitment to pulling financing from the health care law, is so exasperated that she and a group of like-minded advocates have offered to host a meeting for him.

“He can just give us a date,” she said. “We’ll set it up.”

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