Empty Suits. Empty Seats.

The empty town hall phenomenon.

My Congressman hasn’t held a town hall since 2012.

He doesn’t come to his rural district often unless it’s for a fundraiser or for a photo op. He does post pictures from his farm twice a year — planting and harvest time. Other than that, no one I know has seen hide nor hair of Missouri’s 6th District Congressman, Sam Graves, in a very long time.

In his absence, his constituents have started meeting to talk about the policies he keeps voting for while his district keeps falling behind.

Sam has been in DC for 24 years. He is the career politician Republicans like to talk about, but Republicans have voted him in on 12 separate occasions. He is the Washington fixture who has name recognition and usually has no need to campaign in Missouri. He often doesn’t spend a dime to get reelected though his war chest is over 2 million dollars.

I likely wouldn’t know him if I ran into him on the street. He’s been my lawmaker for decades, but I have never seen him in person.

I invited Representative Graves to a town hall in St Joseph, Missouri on March 24th. I never heard back from his office, but I know he was invited by several others who did hear back from his office: a staffer explained to one St Joseph constituent that Sam couldn’t attend the town hall hosted by Persisterhood because he “would be in Washington.”

Fair enough. It was March.

So you can imagine my surprise to hear Rep Sam Graves was actually in St Joseph on the morning of March 24th speaking on a local radio show. It was also a surprise to the radio host and a surprise to the organizers of the empty town hall. No one in the group could recall the last time our Congressman had visited St Joe and here he was in town on the same day Sam’s staffers claimed he couldn’t come to the town hall because he was in Washington.

Weird.

Congressman Sam Graves surprises KFEQ Host, Barry Birr on March 24, 2025. Photo by Brent Martin.

I think the last minute appearance on a local radio show was a subtle poking of the bear. Sam’s office lied to constituents about where he would be on the day of the empty town hall and then proved that he can and does what he pleases no matter how many phone calls he gets from constituents.

Stick it to organizers and prove who’s boss.

Dr. Jane Frick was one of the organizers for the St. Joseph empty town hall.

She stated:

“He (Graves) represents the agribusiness, multimillionaire crew that have taken over the rural areas of our state to turn them into MAGA corporate farms, and he refuses to do anything other than acknowledge, ‘Thank you for your phone call, your letter and join my email that I send out on a weekly basis,’”

Over 300 people attended the empty town hall in St. Joseph for Sam Graves. It was one of the biggest scenes of resistance I have witnessed in Northwest Missouri and it keeps happening.

Empty Seat Town Hall, St Joe, Missouri. March 24, 2025.

A new group in North Kansas City hosted an empty town hall March 19th at the Weatherby Lake Community Center. The group asked Sam Graves to attend, but his staff told the bi-partisan group that they “did not feel safe to attend since it was a public event.”

These are mostly middle-aged women who are asking their own Congressional Representative to join them for a meeting…and he claims to not feel safe? With his own constituents?

The group, Winning Women Wednesday, went ahead with the town hall and placed Graves’ photo on an empty chair — attendees addressed their concerns to the empty seat.

The event ended up being standing room only.

Empty Seat Town Hall, Weatherby Lake, Missouri. March 19, 2025.

I spoke to the same Winning Women Wednesday group a couple of weeks later. They were still as angry at Sam Graves for not showing up for constituents and not responding to their concerns for decades.

This group held a meeting at a private home on April 9, 2025 and it was again a full house. In fact, the meeting had to take place outside because there were so many folks who showed up to hear about organizing in North Kansas City and to show solidarity in trying to contact their own Congressman.

Winning Women Wednesday, Weatherby Lake, Missouri. April 9, 2025.

Another group of constituents showed up in Marceline, Missouri on May 13th. Marceline is a small town about 90 miles from everywhere with a population of around 2K. Over 100 folks filled the event space. The mood was one of irritation and anger at Sam Graves. This event was held just a couple of weeks before the vote on the billionaire’s big bailout bill…known by the Republicans as the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” But there is nothing beautiful about it.

Guess what? Sam Graves voted for the MAGA bill that will gut Medicaid and SNAP and possibly trigger a funding mechanism that could defund Medicare.

And for what? Much of Sam’s district is dependent on Medicaid and SNAP and Medicare — he voted for it anyway.

Empty Seat Town Hall, Marceline, MO. 5/13/2025.

Many of Sam’s constituents are at their breaking point.

I speak to rooms of rural Democrats, so the folks in these rooms are not fans or voters of Sam in the first place, and yet I am hearing stories from them that go beyond what I normally hear from Democrats. The Independents and the Republicans are getting their fill as well.

Sam is from a farming family — he fits in well in Missouri’s 6th District. We have over 27,000 farms in the district and over 9.5 million acres in farmland. But, even the farmers are souring. Trust me…I’ve heard from them as well.

Sam generally flies under the radar as he does not go out and make many outrageous statements and he doesn’t come across as a fist-raising, mob-inciting Josh Hawley figure. His intent is the same though, even if he is milder in his conduct. He carries water for Trump and he votes against his own constituents.

He places party over country. He places MAGA policies above the needs of the 6th District.

The people have had enough, though, and they are organizing to do something about it.

Sam is up for reelection every two years…he might well remember that. The folks I’ve talked to haven’t forgotten.

~Jess

Reader, I thought you might enjoy seeing “Flat Sam.” He is made of cardboard, while displaying his “sponsors”, and is traveling the 6th District to empty town halls in Sam’s absence. He was created and designed by women in the Persisterhood group.