Our reporter gauges attenders’ responses.
By Tamara Solum
Original Air Date: May 14, 2025
Host: Last weekend, a big crowd filed into a church in Sarasota to see a Democratic senator and congressman who have been touring the country in response to the Trump administration’s makeover of the federal government. The short notice and big demand apparently forced the local party into a scramble. The location was unknown until the Friday before the event. WSLR News reporter Tamara Solum was there, not so much to listen to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and Orlando Rep. Maxwell Frost, but to figure out what the Democrat rank-and-file are up to.
Maxwell Frost: Sarasota! How’s everybody doing? How’s everybody doing?
[Audience cheers]
MF: Thank you! Thank you! It is such a blessing to be in Sarasota today with my good friend Sen. Chris Murphy. We are currently on a tour travelling the country. We’re going to districts where the Republican congressperson refuses to meet with their people. And where they’re leaving a void open, we are filling that void and speaking with people about what’s going on in this country.
Harvest House auditorium during the town hall.
Tamara Solum: That was Orlando Representative Maxwell Frost, speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 people.
Last Saturday, citizens from District 17, Representative Greg Steube’s district, showed up at Harvest House, a church in north Sarasota. The occasion: the “On the Road” town hall with Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut and Representative Frost from Orlando.
Julie Forestier, president of the Democratic Women’s Club of Sarasota, shared that well over 1,000 people had RSVP’d, forcing the party to close down the link. Many participants expressed their frustration at being ignored by Steube and his lack of response to requests for a town hall. Dylan Ramsey had some questions for Steube:
Dylan Ramsey: I would just say, “Where are you guys? We’re showing up. We have lots of great questions. We’d love to have a conversation about it, so whenever you’re ready, we’d like to talk.
TS: When asked why she felt there was such a strong interest, Forestier responded:
Julie Forestier: I think there are so many issues, but they all center around the destruction of our Constitution—the destruction of rule of law and due process—and people are tired and do not want our representatives to support the billionaire takeover of our democracy.
TS: Celine Kleinschmidt, a Sarasota resident, explained why she came:
Celine Kleinschmidt: I’m really interested to know what our next actions will be. It’s great to come out for protests and everything, but I really want to know, at the legislative level, what we can do as constituents and what our representatives will do for us.
TS: Constituents in Steube’s district voiced concerns from cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to public education and executive overreach. Several high school students were in attendance. One Booker High School junior, Araiya McClymonds, shared what she would ask Murphy and Frost if given the opportunity.
Araiya McClymonds: I’m really curious about what they’re going to do about Autism Registry—how they’re going to speak out against that. I’m also curious about what they’re going to say with deportations, because we have a lot of Hispanic people who go to my school, who are my friends, who I’m close with. I worry for them and their families, because at this point, it is not even just people without papers that they’re deporting. It’s U.S. citizens. It severely makes me worried.
TS: Maxwell Frost responded to Araiya’s question at the town hall:
Rep. Maxwell Frost
MF: The right likes to talk about it all the time, but then they attack the things that make America exceptional. It’s the fact that our Constitution is for all the people in our land. We have to fight against it. We have to fight against students having their visas revoked on college campuses because the administration disagrees with what they have to say. We have to be against all of this.
TS: Other concerns were voiced by young citizens in the district who are a part of the SEE Alliance. Kennedy Cole from Booker High School wanted to know what the Democratic Party was going to do to bring in young men:
Kennedy Cole: One of the questions I have is—I’m a straight white teenage boy, and if you haven’t heard, there’s a massive trend among straight white teenage boys of going all the way to the alt right because of Elon Musk and Andrew Tate and a lot of these “manly”—quote unquote—things. I really want to know what the Democratic Party’s strategy is to combat that turn of the tide and how we can help.
TS: A student from Sarasota High School, Sloan Cox, wanted to get the message out that young people need to get involved, especially in issues concerning education.
Sloan Cox: I think young people should be a lot more aware of the education policy that is affecting their educations. I think a lot of people just go to school and learn what they learn and don’t really question it. I’ve been questioning it a lot recently. I think more people should be doing that.
TS: During the town hall, Sloan got to ask the legislators about maintaining hope and next steps. Frost responded:
Max Frost. Photo by Ike Hayman
MF: When I decided to run for Congress, I was 24 years old. I was encouraged by my friends to do it. Honestly, all the things that my opponents said about me, I said about myself first. “I’m too young. No one’s going to support me. I don’t have the experience.” This and that. And then I started talking to my friends, who said, “What do you mean, you ‘don’t have the experience’? You’ve been organizing. You also know and experience what it means to go through more school shooter drills than fire drills. You also have the experience of knowing what it means to feel like you might never own a home because the cost is so high. You also know what it means to grow up as a young person in this country and have crushing student debt and crushing debt not because we live beyond our means but because we’ve been denied the means to live.”
And then I realized that it was important that not just my voice, or Maxwell Frost, as a human, be at the table, but that because of my experience, I needed to run for Congress. The thing I would tell all young people here is run for office, because we need people to run for office across this country.
TS: Local author and business owner Seth Stottlemyer had concerns about protecting democracy and the electoral process. He spoke to me prior to the town hall:
Seth Stottlemyer: I do feel like the current political system is very broken. I feel like we need reforms, and I feel like the polarization has reached a point where we need to think of different ways to do things. Ranked choice elections and open primaries have the opportunity to build consensus and move us in a different direction.
TS: At the town hall, Murphy responded to some of his concerns about the rigging of democracy.
Sen. Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy: Everybody knows that this version of democracy is rigged. It is rigged in favor of extreme positions. It is rigged in favor of corporations and billionaires. Our work as a Democratic Party here has to be self-ownership and self-criticism. Democrats have to realize that, if we are ever going to be credible messengers against corruption, then we have to elevate to the top of our policy list the kind of bold, radical ideas that will un-rig not just our economy but our government as well.
TS: Murphy and Frost received a standing ovation at the end of the town hall. Helen James, president of Suncoast Women of Action, gave her reactions to the event.
Helen James: It touched on all the bases of the concerns that we have today: Medicare, our way of living every day. If we are involved in something, we’ve got to make sure we stay active in it. We’ve got to push through all the rhetoric that’s going on. We cannot stay silent, because if we stay silent, nothing will be accomplished.
TS: As the crowd left the event, members of the Sarasota Democratic Party were registering voters, signing up volunteers, and getting local petitions signed. Julie Turner, Treasurer for the Democratic Women’s Club of Sarasota, offered some ways to continue to put pressure on representatives and the governor:
Julie Turner: You should be calling every day. 5calls.org. Always be calling. It was great to see Maxwell Frost put a lot of pressure on him. It was great to see Murphy really push Kristi Noem the other day, and I’d love for him to really go after the governor on immigration and not being so aggressive and instead putting our money towards helping people become legal citizens.
A group of students outside the event.
TS: Booker sophomore Chloe Truewell participated in the 6-month Boxser Diversity Initiative called “Bend the Arc,” where she learned about the civil rights movement, including a spring break trip to Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama. She summed up her experience.
Chloe Truewell: This entire event, first off, is one beautiful thing to see. A community of people coming together to stand up for what they believe in is beautiful. I am glad at the fact that they touched on the public schools’ issues, because what’s happening with public schools right now is not okay. Overall, this event is beautiful. I loved it.
TS: Reporting for WSLR News, Tamara Solum.
You can watch the entire event here.
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