Former Congressman Conor Lamb and state Rep. Lindsay Powell were warmly received Wednesday night at a town hall in Swissvale’s Pittsburgh Mennonite Church, but they weren’t really the officials people wanted to see.
Many of the questions posed at the “Empty Seat Town Hall” were addressed, at least in theory, to Pennsylvania Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick. Organizers of the effort, which included a number of local progressive advocacy groups, have been seeking a chance to address the two men in person.
Those efforts have failed so far — though McCormick has held a pair of telephone town halls — and on Wednesday they posed the questions with Lamb and Powell on-stage instead.
Senator Fetterman: What exactly happened to you [during your meeting with President Trump] at Mar-a-Lago? You came back a changed man.
Senator McCormick: You wore the uniform of the US armed services. How can you stand by and parrot the ‘he made a mistake’ line when [discussion of military plans by Defense officials using] the Signal app put the lives of US airmen in harm’s way?
Where’s the Congress? That’s my question.
Neither Lamb, a former candidate for Senate who lost to Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic primary, nor Powell were trying to speak for the Senators. If anything, they were urging those office holders to listen — and for the audience to keep the pressure on.
"I think the reason that we’re here tonight is to demonstrate ... that our democracy is not Donald Trump's to throw away," Lamb said.
"Everything he does is so visible. He is always on your phones, on your screens,” he added. “But the things that brought us here tonight, the things we care about — the democracy, the rule of law, the strength of our Constitution — those things are not visible until we make them visible.
"And they are not real until we breathe life into them.”
While Lamb and Powell both heaped condemnation on Trump’s economic and civil-rights record, they also joined the criticism of the state’s own Senators, including Fetterman, their fellow Democrat.
“It has been terrifying to see, as an elected official myself who relies very deeply on our partnerships with the federal government, how we don’t have partners who are standing up for us,” Powell said. “It has been terrifying to see how elected officials who are supposed to be beholden to us, who are supposed to stand up for us … aren’t letting our voices be heard.”
“Both of those men could have such loud voices and they could play a role in making the Senate a place where … they can investigate things and get to the truth, and actually enforce the law,” Lamb agreed. “That’s really part of what they should be doing, and they’re not, and I don’t understand why they all go along with it.”
Several audience members expressed concern about the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump Administration admits mistakenly deporting to El Salvador, where he is being housed in a notorious prison despite a US Supreme Court ruling demanding his return. Lamb and Powell were asked how the court could enforce such a ruling if the administration continued to ignore it.
Lamb said the Supreme Court justices had to phrase the demand more forcefully, and acknowledged that it was hard to predict how the federal justice system would react. But he warned that there weren’t just moral costs to ignoring the law.
Investors around the world, he said, “think we have a stable rule of law. That has actual economic value.
"The bond market may enforce Abrego Garcia’s rights better than any of us can.”
In any event, Powell said, the case “shows us again how dangerous the times that we are living in are. … Fears that we could be snatched off the street — that a friend, that a neighbor, that a teacher, that a doctor, that an advocate could be snapped off the streets — are real."
And while the changes seemed to be unfolding quickly, she said, they were the result of years of strategy by conservative thinkers and funders. “We are not here because we had one bad election. We are not here because a few people sat it out.
"We are here because people designed it to be this way.”
Both Powell and Lamb acknowledged that Democrats needed to work out a game plan of their own — and quickly.
Lamb, who has worked as a trial lawyer since leaving politics, said the job had taught him two things.
The first: If “some people on the jury look kind of confused or they’re giving you the stink eye and they’re kind of bored .. you haven’t proven your case.”
And the second: When someone wants “to hire a lawyer to go fight for something, they don’t want to engage in a philosophical discussion of how lawyers should be.” Instead, “they want to know … are you on my side?
“I just think we pick a few interests and defend them,” Lamb added. He cited Medicaid and Social Security as crucial issues Democrats should fight for, as the White House short-staffs those programs and Republicans ponder cuts to them.
“We have to get out there and do it, and I think that’s gonna get us most of the way to where we need to be,” Lamb said.
The crowd was receptive from the outset of the event. Many stood up to cheer when moderator Tracy Baton hailed Lamb and Powell as “heroes who show up here when other people weren’t willing to.”
And at the end, Lamb joked that "if anyone from the staff of either of our Senators, or the many Republican congressmen who also don’t hold town halls — if any of you are watching, I want you to know this is a very comfortable chair they have provided up here for us.”
After keeping a relatively low profile since the 2022 election, Lamb has recently reemerged in the public spotlight in recent weeks, publicly questioning Fetterman for harshly criticizing fellow Democrats while letting Trump slide — or even voting to confirm controversial Cabinet nominees like Attorney General Pam Bondi. That has given rise to inevitable speculation that Lamb’s appearances at public gatherings is laying the ground work for a future run.
But after the event, Lamb said he was “doing a lot of these, but just as a citizen.”
“When people show up at things like this, and they ask questions like this and they insist on accountability from their public officials I think that’s contagious,” he said. “I think that’s what makes the country work.”
Asked how many people urged him to run again — WESA heard one attendee press him to do so — Lamb acknowledged that “a few people mentioned it. [But] the more important thing is that they themselves are taking action.
"I think if people keep doing that, the rest is going to take care of itself.”
