Rep. LaMalfa agreed to a town hall meeting. He got a public reckoning instead | Opinion
No one likes to be yelled at, but sometimes you need to hear and see the anger and hurt your choices have caused for others.
Such was the case on Monday — first in Chico and later the same day in Red Bluff — when Rep. Doug LaMalfa was jeered and booed at, and even cursed out, during two town hall meetings held deep in his bright red district.
“It’s your time,” LaMalfa chided the crowd in Chico. “Ninety minutes is what we get so if you guys want to waste it, you all go ahead.”
It’s never a waste of time to tell your political representative what you think of the job they’re doing — and people start shouting when they feel like they’re not being heard. Clearly, LaMalfa’s constituents are at a breaking point.
This blood-red district’s wrath ought to be a wake-up call for the seven-term Republican, even though LaMalfa has handily carried the district for the last 13 years.
Unfortunately, like a child embroiled in a playground spat, LaMalfa was incapable of seeing past the many insults to understand the root cause of the anger now directed toward him: His voting record.
LaMalfa was criticized for supporting Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which included cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, as well as his support of the president’s immigration enforcement tactics. He was also pressed on Trump’s waning federal support for the social safety net, which would affect half a dozen rural hospitals in the 1st District alone.
The six hospitals at risk of closure under the terms of the Big Beautiful Bill are: Oroville Hospital, St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff, Mayers Memorial Hospital in Fall River Mills, Biggs-Gridley Memorial Hospital, Fairchild Medical Center in Yreka and Modoc Medical Center in Alturas. LaMalfa’s vote to cut Medicaid means the pain and suffering — and possible untimely death — of tens of thousands of constituents who depend on those emergency centers.
LaMalfa’s choices have real consequences for these north staters, and they have every right to get angry, curse at and boo him onstage.
These weren’t unruly “Libs” yelling and cursing at LaMalfa — these attendees in Chico and Red Bluff were well-informed, older residents. They are, statistically, deeply conservative voters, too: The district went for President Donald Trump in 2024 by more than 25 points, and my own experience living in Butte County for more than six years confirms that. Chico’s college voters may represent a blue dot of liberalism, but it is a tiny blue dot in a red, rural sea.
And when these voters are mad, you’re going to hear about it.
“If you’re not here to either announce your resignation, why aren’t you here to apologize to the farmers of the north state because of your support for the Trump tariffs?” CNN reported one audience member said during the Chico town hall.
“I’m not gonna do either. Thanks,” LaMalfa snottily replied. “Do you actually want to talk about something productive?”
Unprofessionalism aside, with that answer, LaMalfa failed to respect that anger can be very productive indeed — if the person it’s aimed at can understand it and try to fix it.
But LaMalfa is incapable of either.
“All these people are angry. They have concerns. I have concerns. I could vote Democrat or Republican as long as I think they’re doing something good for our country. But right now I don’t see that happening with this, and that’s why everybody’s angry,” Jim Smith, a lifelong Red Bluff resident, told the Redding Record-Searchlight.
Smith has summed up the feelings of many in the North State: Party politics don’t matter as long as someone will represent the community’s interests. LaMalfa, who hasn’t had a town hall with his constituents in more than eight years, clearly isn’t interested in listening to his community. No wonder they’re so mad at him.
Across America, voters are starting to hold their representatives accountable. Sometimes that results in rowdy town halls. (I can’t think of anything more historically American, really.) I just hope the North State politician remembers the anger and booing next time he votes along party lines, instead of voting how his district needs him to.
LaMalfa may not like what was said to his face, but he needed to hear it. His actions got him to this point. Now he needs to sit down, shut up, and take it on the chin like a real north stater.
But perhaps he’s gone too soft sitting at his desk in D.C.
This story was originally published August 13, 2025 at 3:21 PM.
