In recent weeks, Austin’s young progressive congressman, Greg Casar, has been testing a new idea: town halls in Republican districts. In press releases, his team points out that these districts’ conservative representatives haven’t held town halls lately, and invites them to join. So far they haven’t. Last weekend, Casar was in Pflugerville in Rep. Mike McCaul’s district, and at the end of last month he visited Rep. Chip Roy’s district. Today he’s scheduled to be in Colorado, answering questions in the largely Latino working-class district represented by Republican Rep. Gabe Evans. Casar seems prepared to tour the country this way. But as the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he seems an unlikely choice to shift purply-red districts more blue.
Austin Chronicle: What is the point in you, a progressive Democrat, holding town halls in Republican districts?
Greg Casar: My title isn’t actually congressman. Our title is representative. If these right-wing officials don’t want to actually be representatives of their community, if Republican congresspeople wanna run away, it’s up to Democrats to show up. And although I’m a staunch progressive, I believe the fight in our country right now isn’t left-right; it’s the billionaires versus everyone else. The Democratic Party needs to be focused on taking on special interests and raising worker pay.
Chronicle: What are the issues that you agree with representatives McCaul and Roy on?
Casar: You know, Chip [Roy] and I are sometimes on the same page, but it’s by accident. For example, he and I both support banning members of Congress from trading stock. And I believe, as Chip has said, that Congress has the power of the purse. Unfortunately, lately Chip hasn’t stuck to that and he’s caved to Trump.
Chronicle: What about with McCaul?
Casar: I think Congressman McCaul has had a reputation as somebody who was supposed to temper some of the most extreme things happening in Congress, but it’s unfortunate that not just him but frankly the entire so-called moderate wing of the party has been nowhere to be found. McCaul and all the other Republicans that call themselves more moderate have all voted for billionaire tax cuts paid for by a nearly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid. So I think the MAGA wing of the party is doing crazy dangerous stuff and the moderate wing of the Republican Party just doesn’t really exist anymore because they’re voting the same way as the right-wingers that they used to make fun of.
Chronicle: It’s interesting because I’m hearing you say that Republicans have lost the moderate wing of the party, and right after the election you and I talked about the idea that a lot of potential Democratic voters felt alienated by the Democratic Party. So several months later, do you still think that alienation from the Democratic Party is a salient issue?
“I believe the fight in our country right now isn’t left-right; it’s the billionaires versus everyone else.” – U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin
Casar: Yeah. Look, I think we still have a real opportunity to slow down Trump and Musk’s abuses by having Republican constituents reach out to their Republican members of Congress and express the real rage and betrayal that they’re expressing to me in these town halls. If three Republican members of Congress break with Trump, then we can slow the Trump agenda in Congress. You don’t have to wait until the election. There’s a window right now in which Republican voters who feel alienated by their own members of Congress can help us save health care, help us save the VA, help us save Social Security. That’s part of why I’m going out and doing the town halls.
And on the Democratic side, since you and I spoke, there’s been more and more polling that shows that Democratic voters feel very alienated from any of their Democratic officials because they want to see Democratic officials standing up and fighting and doing something. And I agree that Democratic officials need to do a lot more. I recognize in order to stop some of the worst abuses against people in Texas, I also have to be across the country in Republicans’ own districts, pressuring them.
Chronicle: If one of the main goals is to encourage just a few Republicans in Congress to vote with Democrats on certain issues in terms of spending, I wonder about the kind of adversarial nature of part of this approach – because it’s a bridging approach, but there’s also something adversarial about the accusation that these reps are not attentive to their constituents. Have you talked to either Roy or McCaul in private recently? And if so, how has that gone?
Casar: I regularly have private conversations with the Republican members of the Texas delegation – not about the town halls because those have been really recent. I’m sure that they don’t like that, but to me, I don’t think that I’m the person who is personally gonna convince some of these Republican members to change their vote. I think we’re well beyond that point. We’ve had the biggest wave of firing of veterans in United States history. They’re doing Tesla car shows on the White House lawn. This strategy is saying that the people should lead and the politicians should follow. This is what’s realistic.
Chronicle: In terms of bridging the gap, I hear two main ideas: One, that you can meet in the middle through moderation, and then the horseshoe theory that extremes tend to loop back around to each other. Since you’re not a moderate, are you attempting to meet in the middle here or do you represent one end of a horseshoe? Or is that a false dichotomy?
Casar: Yeah, I think that dichotomy isn’t how most of these voters think anymore. We might disagree on this social issue or that one, but at the end of the day there’s so many conservative and independent and disaffected voters who believe that billionaires shouldn’t be able to buy off politicians and that working people deserve a tax break and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk should pay a little bit more of their fair share. You can call that progressive, you can call that moderate, you can call that old school. I mean, you can call it whatever. Economic populism – saying we’re gonna take on big interests and big money on behalf of the little guy – is how we rebuild the tent in the Democratic Party. By being more incrementalist or more boring, I don’t think we win over the voters that we’re losing.
This article appears in April 25 • 2025.
