Blumenthal Draws Praise, Pleas And One Challenge At New Haven Town Hall Meeting

Feb. 26--NEW HAVEN -- People stood in two lines stretched to the back of the Wilbur Cross High School auditorium Saturday afternoon, silently practicing questions to ask U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Near the front was a self-declared member of the silent majority.

William Woermer, a Branford retiree, carried a sign supporting President Donald J. Trump. He was perhaps the lone Trump supporter at the town hall meeting, and he wanted to know what Blumenthal was going to do about the risks posed by illegal immigrants, including, he said, the man who allegedly murdered a Bridgeport woman Friday, attacked her friend and kidnapped her daughter.

That man, who was apprehended in Pennsylvania following a multi-state manhunt, was deported from Hartford to El Salvador in 2013.

"What do you intend to do about this?" Woermer, a son of German and Polish immigrants, asked Blumenthal, to scattered but strong applause.

Blumenthal had just finished telling the audience of about 700 people that he could think of nothing more antithetical to American values than a ban on immigration based on a particular religion. To Woermer, he said his support of immigration includes the 11 million people living in the country without documentation.

"Anyone who comes in the United States of America and kills someone would be apprehended and prosecuted," Blumenthal said. "What we should focus on is prioritizing what the real problems are, not engaging in mass detention and mass arrest, building hugely expensive new prisons to detain people and walls that cost close to $30 billion.

"We should focus on comprehensive immigration reform."

Blumenthal answered questions for a little more than two hours on Saturday. He plans to hold his second town hall meeting of the weekend on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

The senator covered a large swathe of topics, just as Sen. Chris Murphy did at a West Hartford town hall meeting on Tuesday, from concerns over Russia and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to defense of the Affordable Care Act.

Many people simply asked Blumenthal what they could do. They gave Blumenthal praise and pleas, questions and critiques.

One woman, Gloria Marino of North Branford, said before the meeting that she hadn't been so frightened since she was a little girl, learning to duck and cover in class as the Cold War crept on. Trump, she said, scared her that much.

"Let me say, we live in a really unusual time," Blumenthal said at the start of the meeting. "Who would have predicted this a year ago? We can laugh or smirk, but it is deadly serious.

"We are the generation whose finest hour will be to preserve our democracy. It's that simple and that serious."

By chance, two mothers with very similar stories reached the front of their lines at the same time. They offered Blumenthal back-to-back accounts of mentally disabled adults who are dependent on the kind of federal services that could disappear under health care reform.

Paula Notarino of West Haven said she worries her son, who is in his 30s, could lose benefits that allow him to be sedated for dental procedures, which terrify him. Lynn Arezzini of Greenwich wants to preserve the services that allowed her 26-year-old son to learn some speech and independence. He now lives in his own apartment, she says, plays cello and occasionally presents testimony to lawmakers in song.

"All that effort and energy, he deserves not to be deserted by our federal and state government," Arezzini said after the meeting. "He does his part and they need to do their part as well."

Blumenthal said he would be "relentless" in defending not only the Affordable Care Act but women's reproductive rights, adding that he was disappointed Gorsuch has not stated his position on abortion.

He pledged to support a filibuster to block a vote on any nominee who would roll back the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion.

It was one of several tangible steps Blumenthal cited in front of a crowd eager for action. Again and again, sign- and flag-wielding members of the audience said Democrats in Congress must do more to resist the Trump administration.

Blumenthal repeated his call for special, independent counsels to investigate alleged Russian involvement in the presidential election -- which he called "an act of warfare" -- as well as Trump's potential conflicts of interest, given his refusal to divest assets in the Trump Organization or place them in a blind trust.

"I know you can all keep a secret," Blumenthal said with a laugh. "But there are days when I miss that [state attorney general] job because I could sue the bad guys, and there are days I wish I could sue this administration.

"... We can talk about alternate facts, but nobody is above the law."

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