Days after congressional Democrats hosted in-person town halls in Republican districts.

GOP Representative Tom Kean Jr held a phone meeting with constituents, hosting them for a 35 minute call Wednesday night.

The first of such a meeting for this session of Congress.

It comes as national GOP leaders have advised members to avoid in-person town halls after events have gotten confrontational, and Republicans argue they're able to hear directly from constituents without them.

Senior editor Colleen O'Dea listened in and joins us now to share what she heard.

Colleen good to see you.

So, of course, we've been talking a lot about whether congressional members are holding in-person town halls or not.

Talk to me a little bit about what it was like listening in.

Was there back and forth between the congressman and constituents?

Was it an open forum?

What happened?

So there really wasn't back and forth because and I don't know the mechanics, because the Cain congressional office has not returned my request to explain some more.

But what what happened was people who were on the call were instructed to click story three, I believe it was, and then ask a question.

And then somehow those questions seemed to get translated by a moderator who whoever that person was, and then and relayed in that way to the congressman.

And then he responded.

So, you know, the things that we see in in-person town halls where a person can go back and, you know, ask a follow up question, maybe challenger response, sometimes these things do get heated.

But none of that happened.

But I wonder, though, can't there be an argument for maintaining decorum, eliminating some of that maybe heckling or the tension that arises in that pushback to be able to answer more questions in a really civil way?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there there could be.

But then, you know, you do run the risk of someone, a congressperson, not answering the question, and then you don't get the the person who asks the question doesn't really get the chance to say, could you try again?

You know, you didn't really respond to my question.

And they'd probably go away frustrated because they didn't get the answer they wanted.

So what is Representative Kaine's history since being in this office with holding town halls and general meeting with constituents?

So he has not held any in-person town halls.

We do know that his office had put out a press release saying that he held ten tell a town halls last year.

It's unclear whether those were all open to General constituents in the district or to select groups, because sometimes Congress people do that.

You know, they'll say that they held a town hall with, you know, Medicaid recipients or what have you.

So it's unclear whether all ten of those were with the general public.

You know, I think the other thing is that that we constantly hear from people in the district is that it is almost impossible to just have a one on one conversation with the congressman or talk to him.

He's very secretive about when he is appearing at public events.

You know, from some congresspeople, we hear so and so is going to be here at this time on this day from Congressman Kaine.

We really only get reports after the fact if we get them in.

Okay.

Let me ask you quickly about some of our other GOP representatives, Jeff Van Drew, Chris Smith.

Have they been holding events like this?

Of course, you know, Democrats are targeting these districts.

But we have heard from folks who voted for them who say, I have no problem accessing my congressman or his constituent office and I'm okay not having a town hall.

What do we know about those districts?

Yeah.

So in Chris Smith's district, everything we hear is that he has not held a town hall in more than a decade, perhaps 20 years.

I reached out to their office yesterday and also did not get a response.

That is one of the districts where Amy Kim held an alternative kind of town hall recently to give people a chance to vent, to hear from them, and also to hear from him what's happening in Washington.

Jeff Van Drew held one maybe earlier this month.

It's unclear.

It was posted on his website on March 13th.

He was asked questions by a staff member.

He said at the start of this that that the staff member would be asking questions that had been submitted.

It was entirely unclear, though, whether those were submitted on the call at that time.

Unlike Congressman Kaine's questions, which seem to be certainly submitted as people were calling.

So I'm not sure about what happened in in Congressman Van Drew's case.

That was a 45 minute telephone hall.

All right.

You can follow all of Colleen O'Dea's reporting on this and other subjects on our website and NJSpotlightNews.org.

Colleen, good to see you.

Thanks so much.

Thank you very much, Bri.