Craig Gilbert

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

You don’t normally see members of Congress doing “town hall” meetings with other members’ constituents.

But Democrats are now adopting this in-your-face tactic as part of their fight to defeat the GOP health care bill and win back the House next year.

Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan plans to go into House Speaker Paul Ryan’s backyard Friday to talk to Ryan’s constituents about health care, the firing of FBI Director James Comey and other issues.

Pocan will appear in Kenosha at a public meeting organized by a local progressive group that organized a march on Ryan’s office earlier this year, Forward Kenosha.

“Paul Ryan is the leader” of the GOP in Congress, Pocan said Wednesday. “He’s the one who allows the tea party to still be the tail that wags the dog. And we need to make sure his constituents have every tool possible to try to influence him in a different direction.”

Pocan spoke to reporters on a call organized by two national groups on the left — the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Indivisible — that are promoting “adopt-a-district Town Halls,” featuring appearances in GOP districts by House Democrats from neighboring districts.

“Progressives are on the offense,” said one of the organizers, Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He said the events would generate “severe pain for Republican members of Congress” who have “gone into hiding like cowards from their own constituents.”

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The Pocan event in Wisconsin would be the third of its kind. Democratic lawmakers from New York and Arizona recently spoke at town halls in nearby GOP districts.

While Pocan is from Kenosha in Ryan’s district, he represents the neighboring congressional district anchored by the city of Madison and lives in the Dane County village of Black Earth. Ryan’s home county of Rock is divided in two, the eastern half represented by the speaker and western half by Pocan.

“I have a lot of connections to the Kenosha area,” said Pocan. “Most of my family is still there.”

The group Forward Kenosha has opposed the GOP health care bill and other policies championed by Ryan. It invited both Ryan and Pocan to the meeting Friday.

Ryan spokesman Ian Martorana responded in a statement:

"Paul is in direct communication with his constituents, serving coffee at the Racine Pancake Breakfast on Saturday and recently holding a telephone town hall meeting with thousands of Rock and Walworth county residents. He’s also been addressing reporter questions regarding the repeal and replace plan in multiple national television interviews this week. Unfortunately, he won’t be unable to attend this particular event in question."

Pocan, one of the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also wrote an op-ed last week for Ryan’s hometown paper, the Janesville Gazette, assailing the GOP health care bill and blasting Ryan for pushing it through the House without getting a final cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

“We need to be more aggressive and we need to be more progressive in getting this message out,” Pocan said of the incursions into GOP districts.

Democrats have accused Republicans of dodging their constituents by avoiding public, town hall-style meetings during recess periods this year.

Like some GOP lawmakers, Ryan has held other kinds of events — “telephone town halls” that are mass conference calls with constituents but typically not covered by the media, and visits to local schools and businesses.

The speaker was in Ohio Wednesday to talk about tax reform. Ryan has a business tour in his district Thursday at InSinkErator in Racine and is visiting a school in Lake Geneva and a business in Delavan on Friday.