An open letter to Rep. Mimi Walters (CA-45)
Dear Rep. Walters,
The point of having a federal representative is so that citizens from different localities all across the United States can be heard in Washington D.C. Your job is to listen to your constituents and be their voice in the United States Congress.
As a tax-paying resident of California’s 45th district and your constituent, I’m writing this letter to let you know just how utterly you’ve failed our community.
You haven’t held a single town hall since your reelection in 2016.
Your office is unreceptive to callers, with a grand total of two responses. It’s either: “I haven’t spoken to the Congresswoman about that issue” or “We’ll be sure to send you a response [read: form letter] regarding your concerns.”
You literally lock your own constituents out of your office when they try and engage with you or your staffers.
You voted to raise taxes on our district, and then had the gall to run ads asking us to thank you for doing so. Not to mention that with that same vote you sabotaged the ACA, which is causing the premiums of families in CA-45 to rise by more than $2,530 next year.
Speaking of the ACA— at the behest of your donors you voted to repeal it, an action that, if it had been successful, would have allowed 338,000 of your constituents with pre-existing conditions to be legally discriminated against and priced out of the healthcare market. You even celebrated that heinous act with a since deleted selfie in the Rose Garden.
And in general, you’ve voted with Donald Trump 98.9% of the time, despite Hillary Clinton winning your district by more than 5 points.
It’s become clear to this constituent (and the 81,192 others who voted for someone other than you in the primary), that your top priority is pleasing your corporate donors and Donald Trump, in that order. The people of CA-45 just don’t seem to matter that much to you.
That’s why this November I’ll be casting my ballot for Katie Porter, a lifetime consumer advocate attorney who has pledged to hold town halls if elected and is refusing all money from corporate PACs. CA-45 deserves a representative who will listen to them and put them first-- you’ve made it abundantly clear that’s not who you are.
Sincerely,
Nathan Taft
I have a lot of opinions. Follow me on Twitter: @nathantaft
[Disclosure]: I’ve been a volunteer with the Katie Porter campaign since November of last year (when it became clear Rep. Walters was not going to even pretend to listen to her community), and recently came on board as a Social Media Consultant for her campaign.
