ELYRIA — An Elyria woman said a member of Congresswoman Betty Sutton’s staff asked her to leave a public meeting held Tuesday in Lorain because the woman wanted to know if she could ask the congresswoman questions during the talk.

Nichole Reynolds, Sutton’s chief of staff, said the staff member who spoke to the woman denied telling her that the meeting was private, as the woman alleges, and also denies telling her she had to go.

Jane Grimm, 58, said she had wanted to speak with her congresswoman about health care reform and called her Washington, D.C., office last week to see when Sutton would be coming to town. A staff member took down her information and, Grimm said, a few days later Stephanie Wiersma, CEO of Lorain County Health & Dentistry, contacted her about Sutton’s appearance Tuesday at the clinic.

She said she did not ask how Wiersma knew to contact her, but said she assumed Sutton’s office provided Wiersma with her information.

Grimm was under the impression that it would be a town-hall-style meeting where there would be a chance to ask questions of the congresswoman but quickly learned when she arrived to the clinic with her husband that would not be the case.

“I saw all these signs saying that it wasn’t a town hall meeting, so I realized that was that,” Grimm said.

Outside were protesters picketing health care reform and local veterans concerned about the possibility of losing the Veterans Administration offices currently housed in St. Joseph Community Center, which is slated to close by the end of the year.

She and her husband walked into the clinic and wanted to confirm with staff people in the front whether this was a meeting where questions could be asked. Grimm said a man wearing a name tag identifying him as a Sutton staff member approached them. This is where the stories differ.

“He said, ‘I was told I’d see you here,’ and ‘I understand you wanted this to be a town-hall meeting,’ and I told him that I wanted to ask a few questions,” Grimm said.

She said the staffer told her it was not that kind of meeting.

“I said, ‘All right, well, I’d still like to sit and listen to what the congresswoman has to say,’” Grimm said. “Then he said, ‘No, I’m not going to allow you in because this is a private event.’ ”

The staffer offered to have someone take down her information and the questions she wanted answered, which included whether tax dollars will be used for abortion under the proposed health care plans, whether there will be health care rationing and her concerns over what she describes as the “radical ideas” of presidential adviser Ezekiel Emanuel.

She said no one knew what questions she wanted to ask until she told the second staff member who came over to take down her information. After that, she and her husband left.

“At the time, I truly thought maybe it was a misunderstanding, that maybe it was a private event,” she said. She contacted Wiersma on Wednesday to see if the event was private and discovered it was not.

Reynolds said she spoke with the staff member Thursday and he said he never told the woman she could not be there.
“She was not turned away,” Reynolds said. “She talked with one of our staffers and gave her information. She was not denied entry. We’re going to reach out to her and see if she wants to meet with Congresswoman Sutton.”

When asked whether it’s possible the staff member might have made an error in judgment in an effort to keep the meeting calm, given what has been happening at some town hall meetings across the country, Reynolds said Sutton’s staff was fully aware of those incidents and prepared to react if things got out of hand — not to act in a premeditated manner to exclude audience members.

“It was more of a heightened sense of preparedness if the event were to turn volatile,” she said. She said police were there, and necessary precautions were taken to ensure everyone was safe.

Grimm said Thursday what the staff member told Reynolds wasn’t true, and that Reynolds already has contacted her and provided her office number so Grimm could have her questions answered.

Reynolds said she believes the staff member when he said he did not turn Grimm away.

“Our staff is obligated to tell the truth,” she said. “A story like this is not going to help people. It’s going to make people think our staff allegedly turned someone away, and that did not happen. It’s a he-said, she-said situation.”

Contact Adam Wright at 329-7129 or awright@chroniclet.com.

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