politics

Virginia Congressman Says Women Are All Up ‘In My Grill’ About Health Care

Representative Dave Brat’s grill is crowded these days. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc./Getty Images

Virginia representative Dave Brat is finding out that his constituents — especially women — would kinda like to keep the Affordable Care Act around. “Since Obamacare and these issues have come up, the women are in my grill no matter where I go,” he told a conservative audience at an event Saturday. “They come up — ‘When is your next town hall?’ And believe me, it’s not to give positive input.”

He added that the grill invasion continues online: “I had one woman on my Facebook say she was going to get up in my grill,” he said in a separate interview. “There’s paid protesters … paid activists on the far left, not my Democratic friends I go to church with. They’re being paid to go around and raise havoc.”

But the women he’s heard from insist they’re not being paid — Karen Conley of Henrico County told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that she recently called Brat’s office in support of the Affordable Care Act because it insures her family. Brat says another woman came up to him at a high-school event: “The mom comes up and says, ‘I can’t believe you’re going to get rid of Obamacare; we have a right to it.’ I go … ‘I don’t think health care’s an enumerated power.’ I didn’t say that, right, I try to be Christian. But she went after me.” Being held accountable by the people who elected you to represent them sure does sound exhausting.

Virginia Congressman Say Women Are All Up ‘In My Grill’