Newly-elected Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans has been the subject of much progressive media scrutiny lately, in particular around town halls. Is he going to do them? Will he do them in person?  How else can he respond to criticism from Democrats which mirrors earlier town hall capers involving fellow Republicans Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner?

Fair questions.  It’s entirely appropriate to ask about and discuss which politicians are accessible to their constituents and in what ways.  That third question is suggestive, however.  Does this newfound enthusiasm for reporting on town halls represent a genuine interest in politicians interacting with voters, or is it perhaps more?

Town hall reporting bandwagon

As I’ve written before, perception can be tricky; we tend to focus those things that are top of mind and that confirm our existing beliefs.  To check my suspicions about town hall coverage, I ran a site search on the left-leaning news media heavyweights Colorado Public Radio (CPR), The Colorado Sun, Colorado Politics, and the Denver Post for the phrase “town hall” appearing between the dates 1/1/2019 to 12/31/2024.  I then ran the same searches from 1/1/2025 to 4/4/2025

Results were mixed, but in summary (and by a wide margin across all the outlets), coverage of town halls prior to 2025 was spread wider across topics and time while coverage in the just the first four months of 2025 has been narrower in both time and topic.

Prior to 2025, town hall articles were few and far between, ranging over years and across the state, from the city level up to the national.  Colorado Politics’ search results, for example, showed a link to a Front Range town hall held by that outlet and 9News in 2024 linked right next to something about a series of post-COVID virtual town halls across the state from 2021.

By contrast, searches after the start of 2025 had links starting late February to the present and a much higher proportion of them covering how Colorado’s congressional Democrats’ town halls went, and contrasting them with congressional Republicans’ efforts.

It’s even more dramatic if you focus on Gabe Evans.  I don’t think my word processor has enough hyperlinks to include a representative sample, so you’ll have to take my word for it that the coverage on what he is doing or not doing is beyond extensive.

Again, worthy coverage, but is it fair, evenhanded?  Comparing earlier coverage of this same congressional district shows that, no, it isn’t.

I did searches of the social media (Facebook and Twitter) of Evans’ Democrat predecessor Yadira Caraveo, as well as looking in her official webpage for the phrase “town hall”, “town”, “meeting”, and “meet” during her tenure in Congress.  I was not able to find a single announcement of a town hall.  There were mentions of her meeting industry groups in DC, meeting some business groups, and having lunch with some elementary school kids in her district, but no town halls.  I won’t claim my research is perfect, nor completely exhaustive, but the utter lack of results here doesn’t paint Caraveo as an outlier among members of Congress for being present with constituents.  The same cannot be said for Gabe Evans.  As I’ve already alluded to, finding an article on Evans and town halls is like fishing in a barrel.

Why the disparity?  Why the sudden surge of interest in town halls from progressive journalists?  Why particularly for a Republican in the highly competitive 8th Congressional District?

Press as progressive PR firms

I can’t read minds, but I do have a theory.  It goes without saying that the Democrats are eager to beat Republicans about the head over  all things Trump,  They’re also  great at generating public noise (along with their associated advocacy groups), which draws news media eager for high emotion and sensationalism like moths to a light.  They’ve been at this game been for some time.  I am old enough to remember the operatives at ProgressNow parading a cardboard cutout of Senator Cory Gardner around the state in 2017 asking where the real Gardner was (this topic now being trotted back out for current congressional Republicans).

Colorado Republicans, and I’ll be charitable here, are not good at generating public noise unless it’s about their internal dysfunction. There are no cardboard cutouts of Governor Polis (who has not held an in person town hall out here on the Eastern Plains since he got his butt handed to him by a high school student), nor are any other statewide or national Democrats being trotted around.  To the degree complaints about Democrats not visiting conservative areas in person exist, they certainly aren’t loud enough for the Front Range media to hear.

Colorado’s congressional Republicans might not be good at making noise, but neither are they dumb.  They know exactly what would happen at a town hall.  It would be dominated by angry activists rounded up by those very same Democratic/liberal advocacy groups there to generate publicity, not ask sincere questions.  Why give them a platform?

On top of all this, you have the progressive media’s lack of skepticism for what they’re told by their ideological brethren. Amid all the noise they hear, the clamoring and stunts, they ought to be doing some basic journalism leg work. Is what Gabe Evans is doing (or not doing) any different than from his Democrat predecessor?

Not being led around by the nose isn’t that hard, it just takes discipline.  It means staying your writing hand long enough to gather a full picture of a situation.

While I wish that conservatives and Republicans in this state were better about generating productive noise and tumult, I wish more that our left-of-of news media were more skeptical of the noise from groups that have learned to manipulate them so well.

Cory Gaines is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado.  He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack