Redlands, CA — U.S. Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis easily handled both the fly balls and fouls at a friendly standing-room audience of 700, at a Town Hall meeting held at University of Redlands’ Orton Center. The enthusiastic crowd easily gave him eight to ten standing ovations. The evening was not without a few hecklers, along with those who, while respecting Lewis’s answers, clearly desire changes in healthcare, but who hold reservations in immediately passing the massive, economy-changing bill currently before Congress.

At the beginning of the meeting, a woman appearing to be in her late twenties broke the crowd’s respectful tone by strongly yelling, “That is a f-(explicative) lie!” Hostile “BOOOS” may have frightened her; some speculated that she was a “plant” who planned to start a ruckus, because she immediately turned and left the room following her outburst, having initially placed herself only a few feet from the door.

An elderly man continued to yell comments during other’s questions, disrupting the meeting to responding “BOOS.” Lewis asked the man to allow a strong discussion among all who had prepared written questions. The man persisted, and at one point, authorities moved to expel the man, but Lewis defended him and asked for him to be to allowed to stay, requesting that he behave himself.

During his presentation, Lewis picked up the massive 1000-plus page Healthcare bill, and held it up, revealing dozens of hot-pink sticky notes bursting from the edges of the document. “I have read the whole bill, but I have a few issues,” Lewis said, referring to the pink notes. The standing-room-only audience broke into cheers and applause. Rep. Lewis read several pages marked by the pink tabs; the response of the mostly friendly group, indicated intense displeasure with the contents of the bill.

Lewis answered questions in a straight-forward manner, many eloquently, without the usual dogging that seems to be in vogue by most politicians today. A few detractors in the crowd questioned some of his facts and statistics, or appeared to be generally supportive of a public heath care initiative; however they but did not ask their questions during the evening. Many of the questions had been submitted beforehand. Lewis expressed regret that not all questions could be addressed, and urged people to contact his office or to email their questions to him.

Meanwhile, the press appeared to focus their cameras on a few dissenters, hoping to catch “the action” in what appeared to be an attempt to gather a story for the night’s 11:00 p.m. newscast. If they were looking for sensationalism in Redlands, they did not find it. For the vast majority in attendance, this Tea Party was inspirational meeting of Americans who came together to converse about their concerns. The success of the evening was in the fact that the practice of democracy was exercised by concerned citizens, who came together because they care about the state of the union.

Writen by Ron Burgess, Margaret Rippetue of  RedFusion Media  - All Rights Reserved - 2009.