By KYLE PALMER

Hundreds of people, including members of the activist group Indivisible KC, looked for answers at a town hall hosted by U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas, Monday morning.

The Republican’s town hall at the Lenexa Conference Center was his first in Johnson County in over a year. It was a long time coming for some.

“Indivisible has been asking for a town hall in the eastern part of the state since January and we finally got one,” Indivisible KC Board Member Leslie Mark said.

Mark said members of the organization wanted to ask Moran about issues regarding healthcare, specifically the Republican-backed plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. It’s an issue she said other local Congress members have been closed-off about.

“We don’t have a lot of representatives willing to talk to us, so I give him a lot of kudos for doing this,” Mark said. “But it’s very distressing that it’s such an attenuated and hard to get to point.”

The issue came up frequently during the town hall with the crowd at times breaking out into chants and cheers.

At another point, Moran received applause for saying he would buck his GOP colleagues if necessary.

Mark, the Indivisible KC member, said healthcare has been mishandled by the Senate.

“The Senate is not following procedure and by having no hearings, by not having expert witness testimony, by having thirteen white men and no one else discussing it they’re going to fix what ails our country even though for the past forty years’ better heads, probably, have prevailed on this topic,” Mark said.

In addition to questions about the replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Indivisible planned to ask about Medicare expansion, taxes, the choice act and investigations on the Trump administration’s ties to Russia.

Afterwards, Moran told reporters he was “pleased with the magnitude and demeanor of the crowd.”

Katie Bernard contributed to this story. Kyle Palmer kcur.org’s morning newscaster. 

———-

LENEXA, Kan. (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran has told a sometimes raucous crowd of hundreds that he would have voted against a House-passed bill that would repeal and replace the Obama-era federal health care overhaul law.

The Kansas City Star reports that Moran spoke Monday at a conference center in Johnson County, which President Donald Trump won by fewer than 3 percentage point.

Moran says he’s waiting to see the final version of the Senate’s bill before determining how he’ll vote. He bemoaned it being drafted in closed meetings but wouldn’t commit to withholding his vote if there aren’t open hearings.

It was the first in-person public town hall meeting in the county since Trump took office. Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Kevin Yoder haven’t had such meetings in recent months.