{"id":542,"date":"2017-02-21T00:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/?p=542"},"modified":"2017-02-21T00:55:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T05:55:00","slug":"democrats-plan-presence-at-upcoming-macarthur-speech-at-occ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/2017\/02\/democrats-plan-presence-at-upcoming-macarthur-speech-at-occ\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Plan Presence at Upcoming MacArthur Speech at OCC"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_543\" style=\"width: 750px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-543\" class=\"size-full wp-image-543\" src=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur.jpg\" alt=\"U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur. (File Photo)\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur.jpg 740w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur-681x383.jpg 681w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-543\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur. (File Photo)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A New Jersey lawmaker who recently said town hall meetings were being &#8220;hijacked&#8221; by protesters may face a presence from his detractors at an upcoming speech planned at Ocean County College.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3), who recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.app.com\/story\/news\/2017\/02\/13\/gop-rep-macarthur-avoids-town-hall-tumult\/97845830\/\">told a reporter<\/a> his slate of public town hall meetings was on hold because he didn&#8217;t\u00a0&#8220;want to be baited into having an event that some outside group can just make a spectacle out of,&#8221; was already scheduled to speak at the college March 31. The college confirmed MacArthur will still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocean.edu\/content\/public\/for-the-community\/news\/congressman-macarthur.html\">present his talk<\/a>: &#8220;Government &amp; Politics: What You Need to Know with Congressman Tom MacArthur,&#8221;\u00a0on Friday,\u00a0March 31at 11 a.m. in the Gateway Building Lecture Hall. It was not known if MacArthur was planning to take questions.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, the Ocean County Democratic organization was encouraging its members to attend.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Please attend and let him know we are here!&#8221; a Facebook post from the party said. &#8220;More details to follow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Numerous members of congress, particularly Republicans, have suspended question-and-answer sessions and town hall meetings out of concern that protests from groups opposed to President Donald Trump or the repeal of the Affordable Care Act could cause a disruption. During a recent phone-in town hall meeting, MacArthur said that at some public town hall events, protesters were bused in by the hundreds &#8220;and in some cases have even been paid to disrupt and to steal your voice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FOceanDems%2Fposts%2F10155090912822792&amp;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>MacArthur was one of the few GOP congressional members to vote against the immediate repeal of the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, since he did not believe a viable alternative was ready to be deployed. Nonetheless, a group of protesters is planning to picket outside his office at the Toms River municipal building Feb. 25.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bernie Sanders has called upon his supporters to come together, in support of the Affordable Care Act,&#8221; the <a href=\"https:\/\/go.ourrevolution.com\/page\/event\/detail\/gplvtc\">announcement of the protest<\/a>, set to\u00a0last four hours, said. &#8221;\u00a0So let&#8217;s rally in front of Congressional Rep. Tom MacArthur&#8217;s office, and voice our concern for attempts to dismantle Obamacare and take away needed healthcare insurance for millions of Americans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>MacArthur won re-election in Nov. 2016 over his Democratic challenger, Frederick LaVergne.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/2017\/02\/democrats-plan-presence-at-upcoming-macarthur-speech-at-occ\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A New Jersey lawmaker who recently said town hall meetings were being &#8220;hijacked&#8221; by protesters may face a presence from his detractors at an upcoming speech planned at Ocean County College. U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3), who recently told a reporter his slate of public town hall meetings was on hold because he didn&#8217;t\u00a0&#8220;want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[217,218,148,11],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","tag-occ","tag-ocean-county-college","tag-tom-macarthur","tag-toms-river-nj-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/tom_macarthur.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}