The packed crowd wrote questions on comment cards, which Davidson’s staff then organized, eliminating duplicates. Rick Pearce, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce Serving Middletown, Monroe and Trenton, moderated the event and asked questions on behalf of the audience.
Melissa Schardine, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3448, said she attended the town hall to advocate for government workers, especially those at Social Security.
“It’s a very high stress job on a good day,” she said. “And they keep plucking and plucking and plucking employees from us.”
Questions answered ranged on topics including property taxes; AI and privacy; Medicaid; size of government; National Guard deployment in U.S. cities; and the Big Beautiful Bill, which Davidson called “imperfect.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Davidson received an early reaction on comments on claims of immigrants in the country illegally receiving Medicaid benefits through “loopholes” in certain U.S. states.
An audience member shouted, “They’re humans.”
“Well, soon they won’t be in the United States, so they won’t cost us anything,” Davidson responded, garnering some applause and some booing.
This occurred about 10 minutes into the town hall, with some audience members asking the crowd to let Davidson speak.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Many of his remaining answers received similar responses — a mixture of applause, booing and shouted words, which one audience member said was “uncalled for.”
Davidson’s comments on needing an AI privacy bill in Congress received a general positive response.
Several times, Davidson stepped back from the podium to let the crowd die down before continuing to talk.
No attendee was removed during the event for disruption.
Following the town hall, Davidson answered media questions and said, “I hope (the town hall) was somewhat therapeutic for everybody. Maybe that’s just what they needed is to come and feel like they were heard because they were … mostly here to just kind of yell things that couldn’t really be heard by everybody.”
He said some attendees — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — left early because they were “frustrated they couldn’t even hear what we were talking about,” according to some early feedback.
Though many recent GOP town halls have gone similar ways, Davidson said he felt “it was important to do.”
“I tried to basically serve the people that wanted to come have an actual town hall, and it was disappointing that a lot of other people were very disruptive,” he said.
Attendees who asked a question that did not get a response were told they would receive a written response following the event.
GOP town halls
In March, House Speaker Mike Johnson encouraged Republican lawmakers to skip town halls, and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, shared his stance on town halls with the Dayton Daily-News in August: “People see me all the time. I meet with and speak with local groups and organizations frequently and answer questions. I’m not going to participate with these radical groups who are only interested in promoting themselves and not our community.”
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