Representative Kevin Hern (OK-01) hosted a town hall on July 15, 2019. More than 4,300 constituents participated, either on the call or live-streaming from Rep. Hern’s website.

Attendees were from all over the First Congressional District, including Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Bartlesville, Sand Springs, and Wagoner.

Rep. Hern took questions from callers, as well as questions submitted on Facebook and through the online portal. While many constituents were curious about immigration developments and the crisis on our Southern border, questions ranged from trade to foreign affairs to disaster aid to religious liberty.

“As a representative of my constituents, there’s nothing more important to me than connecting with them, talking to them, and listening to what they have to say,” said Rep. Hern. “Doing a town hall in the virtual setting allows me to connect with many, many more people in a convenient way. People can participate from the comfort of their own home, or they can listen in while at the grocery store or driving home from work. I’ve been working hard to keep an open line of communication with my constituents, and I look forward to hosting more town hall events as my time in Congress continues.”

The event was promoted on social media channels with a dial-in number and a link to live stream the audio on Rep. Hern’s website. In addition, thousands of constituents were called and invited to join the event.

Excerpts:

Mark from Broken Arrow: China wants to overtake the United States with tech they’ve largely stolen. We have to fight back with better technology and take back our technologically superior economy. Is there a coalescing of agreement on that?

Rep. Hern: That’s what the President’s main concern is with trade. The deficits with trade deals are bad – we’re talking $500 billion in deficits with our trade with China. More importantly, it’s the stealing of our technology. They have an economy that is growing about 7% a year, they clandestinely own many of the companies that compete with us globally. They have a program that’s called Belt & Road, which I encourage you to look up. With this program, they’re going through less developed countries and building infrastructure, loaning money to these countries that they cannot ever pay back. Then they foreclose on them and take those properties as an extension of the Chinese government into those under-developed countries. They know how to do this. We’re dealing with countries who have leaders with no terms. They can be very patient and wait out the current leader of the free world. We need to be cognizant and push back.

Andrea from Tulsa: I hear that Tulsa might become a sanctuary city, is that correct? What steps do we take as citizens of this city and the state of Oklahoma to prevent that from happening?

Rep. Hern: That’s a great question. Much has been made in the last few days about the deportation efforts by the government, and I’d like to remind everybody on the call that President Obama deported more than 3 million people during his 8 years in office, about 400,000 per year. President Trump has deported about 400,000 people in a 2-year period, about half of what President Obama did. The process that Democrats and all of us, really, are asking them to do is for asylum seekers to go through our court system, have their case listened to, and be granted asylum or sent back home. Of the thousands that are sent to court, only about 15% qualify for asylum. 85% are given notice to leave the country. Those in the 85%, who have not left the country, that’s who the executive branch is looking for with deportations. When you have a mayor that says, “immigrants are welcome”, I’d hope every mayor would say that legal immigrants are welcome. Our country is made up of legal immigrants. It’s the illegal immigrants, the ones who have violated the law, that I find troubling when a mayor is willing to say that. We want to follow the rule of law in this country, and when you blatantly, as a lawmaker in DC or in the statehouse or as the mayor of a city, want to tell people to violate the very law that you swore an oath not to violate, I find that very troubling. I’d reach out to your mayor, city council, police officers, state legislators, me as your Congressman and your U.S. Senators, to let us know how you feel.

Leland from Broken Arrow: Are you supporting any gun control legislation in the House? I don’t support gun control.

Rep. Hern: Me neither. I’ve been an avid hunter, had guns my entire life. I’m a lifetime member of Gun Owners of America, lifetime member of the NRA. We have other issues we need to deal with, one of them being mental health readiness, understanding that.  I’ve spent a lot of time researching this, it’s not our guns that are causing the problem. I have a hard time with the definition of an assault rifle, there are many guns that have multiple rounds in them, or more than one. It’s not the gun’s fault, it’s the fault of the people buying the guns. We have other issues to deal with in that area.

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