When Monte Ogden was a teacher, House Representative Rob Bishop taught just down the hall at Ben Lomond High School in Ogden, Utah.

“We broke bread every day in the faculty room,” Ogden said of the former teacher.

Bishop, R-Utah, was elected to Congress in 2002. The teachers who ate lunch with Bishop recently took a poll among themselves.

“Not a single one of us now would vote for Rob,” Ogden said.

Perhaps some of the teachers’ concerns may have been expressed at a Washington Terrace, Utah town hall in late April by the Trump resistance group Indivisible Ogden. (Ogden is a major Utah city.) It was meant to draw attention to Bishop not holding a town hall since the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. Both constituents and experts on issues percolating in Washington, D.C. spoke next to a cardboard cutout of the congressman.

As of June 13, there had been five full weeks of consecutive days of recess since the Jan. 20 inauguration, aside from other days off, according to the House Majority calendar.

Rep. Rob Bishop received 92.6 percent of his donations from outside Utah, the state he represents. That’s the highest percentage of any House member, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. (OpenSecrets.org)

Among the concerns raised: that Bishop, who has a brand of promoting the local role in national issues, received 92.6 percent of his donations from outside Utah, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. (The state’s two senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, are also in the top 10.)

When Terri Martin, a Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance organizer, pointed that out, she also noted that Bishop said the following to Western state land commissioners two summers ago about folks who support the law giving presidents authority to proclaim monuments:

“If anyone here likes the Antiquities Act the way it is written, die,” Bishop said. “I mean, (get the) stupidity out of the gene pool!”

The law is “the most evil act ever invented,” he claimed.

Representation?

Constituents expressed problems with even being able to hear from their representative.

As a student, Darren Bingham flew to D.C. twice to meet with Bishop.

No luck, he said.

Darren Bingham said he flew to Washington, D.C. twice as a college student to meet with his House representative, Rob Bishop, but didn’t get an audience. (Utah State University Student Association)

“I’ve seen him in the hallway, avoiding me,” said Bingham, who as a Logan resident while attending Utah State University, was a constituent of Bishop’s.

Bingham, who has advocated regarding various political issues, has otherwise tried for three years to meet with the 14-year congressman, he said.

Chris Jensen of South Ogden donated “thousands of dollars” to Bishop’s campaigns. However, Bishop never returned his calls or emails.

“I will make sure it doesn’t go there in the future,” he said.

Debra Badger of Ogden described herself as an “alarmed Utah Republican.”

“I never thought this is the way to communicate with my legislators,” she said while motioning to the cutout before speaking to it.

“This has got to be a first,” she said. “When you were teaching U.S. government, is this how you taught your students how government works?”

Genevra Prothero of Syracuse called Bishop’s office about Betty Ramos Castro being deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Trump asked the agency for more aggressive enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. That meant for a teenager (Castro’s son) with cerebral palsy and epilepsy and an 86-year-old woman (Castro’s mother) without a caretaker.

Prothero, who is the campaign manager of Misty Snow for Congress, said she never got a call back.

“Why do you only care about your call from ConocoPhillips and not the human race?” Prothero proposed, mentioning a donor from the oil and gas industry.

A billboard went up in Ogden that saw two milk cartons with a photo of Bishop that reads, “Have you seen this congressman?” Jim Hutchins of Ogden raised funds for it. The $2,400 needed was raised in just three days.

“We need a representative Republican,” Hutchins said. “Not a cardboard Rob.”

The experts

John Armstrong is a physics professor at Weber State University, which is in Bishop’s district.

“I’m a scientist studying the atmosphere and I can tell you that climate change is real,” he said. “I would like Rob and Republican Party in general to respect the work of scientists.”

He added that Bishop’s public lands initiative, federal legislation Bishop said sought a compromise between local and national interests and energy development and conservation, “is not about protecting land.”

“It’s about states’ rights versus federalism,” Armstrong said. “Rob’s a smart guy… he knows that climate change is real.”

Shaun Chapoose is the chairman of the Ute tribe in Utah. He never was included in the Public Lands Initiative legislation, which concerned land including that over which he has jurisdiction, he said. (Tim Peterson, Indianz.com)

Shaun Chapoose is the chairman of the Ute tribe in Utah. He traveled about 200 miles from Vernal, Utah, for the town hall. The PLI impacted him “directly,” he said, because the bill meant for the designation of more than 100,000 acres of wilderness and conservation areas in exchange for the acquisition of a large natural-gas facility and future development of a ski area. But ultimately, Chapoose opposed the PLI, he said, because the chairman in a tribe that is the second-largest in North America was not included in PLI deliberations.

Laura Holdrege, Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid enrollment coordinator for the Utah Health Policy Project, made it clear that the non-partisan organization opposes the Affordable Care Act being replaced.

Whitney Duhaime is the vice president of Denials Management, which helps clients, often those with mental illness or a pre-existing condition, get the claims they should receive from their health insurance company. She pointed out that more than 50 percent of Americans get insurance through their employer, including 59 percent of Utahns. And with a loss of the ACA in favor of the GOP bill, she added, employer plans will not have “10 essential health benefits” as found in the current health care law.

“Every legislators’ office I spoke with did not understand that or how the American Health Care Act would replace that… including (Bishop) staff members Lee Lonsberry and Hans Buckwalter,” she said of meeting with staff of Utah’s six federal delegation members. “Our legislators are betting that we don’t know what we stand to lose, and it’s time we prove them wrong — that we do know what we stand to lose.”

Martin touted the preservation of Bears Ears, a 1.35 million-acre national monument declared by former President Barack Obama in December. It was originally recommended to Obama that it be larger and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended to Trump that it be shrunk.

Angela Urrea of Utah Indivisible pointed out that a bipartisan group of senators called the Gang of Eight had a bill, SB744, in 2013 that would have achieved comprehensive immigration reform. It passed the Senate but former House Speaker John Boehner “sat on it,” Urrea said.

“We want Rep. Bishop to re-submit SB744 for passage in the House and provide pathway to citizenship for dreamers — the kids who were brought here (by parents illegally),” Urrea said.

The constituents

Cynthia Wilson of the Utah Navajo nation said that her area of residence is ignored because they don’t live “in a city council area.”

“We are not far from the Blanding community,” she said. “We are only an hour away.”

“Now that the Bears Ears monument has been designated,” she added, “our tribal voices have been honored.”

Richard Bush of Ogden expressed gratitude from for treatment from a “marvelous surgeon” in Dr. Sheila Garvey, at Ogden Regional Medical Center. His bill was $148,000.

“I’m so glad I have insurance,” he said. “If I had to pay out of pocket, I would be in debtor’s prison.”

Josh Hobson’s message for his House representative, Rob Bishop, if the congressman supports budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency: “you are mortgaging our future.” (Summit County Democratic Party)

Josh Hobson of Park City organized the late-April March for Science in his town. He expressed his disagreement with the threats of budget cuts from Trump, which could be approved by Congress, regarding the Centers for Disease Control and Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Rob, I know you disagree with it,” Hobson said, “but you are mortgaging our future.”

Lynn Carroll of Ogden said he wanted to ask Bishop “what he really thinks about climate change.”

“I had some ideas of what me might be thinking,” Carroll said, “but I want to hear it from his own mouth.”

A veteran from Roy wanted to ask: “Do you not believe that LGBTQ individuals deserve equal protection under the law?”

Diana Rodham from Plain City said that her daughter is profoundly autistic and thus needs Medicaid.

“So it offends me,” Rodham said, “for Speaker (Paul) Ryan to refer to what he refers (Medicaid) to as entitlement.

Danae Snow of Ogden said she was homeless a year ago because of her child’s emergency neurosurgery. They were uninsured.

She added: “I’d like to ask Rob Bishop, look into my daughters’ eyes and say ‘you don’t deserve equal pay. Look into my son’s eyes and say you don’t deserve clean air to breathe.”

Republican lawmakers are often blamed for both issues.

Teresa Holmes of Ogden said she was wearing a “huge” pin for Peter Clemens, Bishop’s challenger last election cycle, last summer at the Weber County Fair. That didn’t stop Bishop from asking “you aren’t going to vote for me?” Holmes said.

Amelia Jones from Ogden (she gave her ZIP code: 84401) said to the cutout, “you need to be here more often and hear what are concerns are.”

“That is your job,” she added.

Judith is a 19-year-old Weber State student who was born in a “not-so-good part” of Mexico City, she said. She passed a physical test and had a perfect score on her citizenship test but is not a U.S. citizen. That means she got no assistance via Free Application for Federal Student Aid and “almost no help” from the government generally, though she had a good GPA and accumulated more than 300 hours with the American Red Cross.

“I’m not (a citizen) even though I’ve lived here more than half my life,” she added.