“You know whose house we are in tonight and you know who didn’t answer the door for us,” May, host of Monica May’s Point of View on Star 94.5, told the crowd. “But we are going to leave little messages for him.”

One gentleman stood up and literally left a message for Webster.  Dialing the congressman’s office from the town hall with the microphone up to his cell phone speaker, he left a voicemail with the crowd cheering in the background.

“Use your voice”

May strode through the crowd with the microphone, talk show host-style, giving as many people as possible an opportunity to speak.  

“I want to hear a first-time person who’s come to one of these town hall meetings,” May told attendees. “You don’t even have to tell me your name. But how do you feel right now? [Webster’s] not here. But other people are here. How are you going to use your voice?”

A dark-haired woman stood up. “I’m not afraid to say my name,” she announced. “My name is Liz Rogers and I am a proud Democrat. We are sick and tired of it all. We cannot live or thrive on chaos. But April 5 we had the Hands Off Protests. Raise your hand if you showed up?" Hands shot up. "We are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. And if you’re old enough, you remember that movie."

Rogers urged attendees to use 5 Calls, an app with legislator phone numbers, backgrounders on 54 key issues and model scripts for leaving voicemail for lawmakers. Rogers said she called the number on the giant MISSING! poster of Webster that greeted attendees as they checked in for the event. “I said, Daniel Webster, we’re here. Where are you? You don’t want to have a town hall? Guess what? The Democrats will handle it from here.”

A middle-aged man with dark hair and a booming voice got up to speak about property insurance and the coming hurricane season.

“How many of you suffered damage, flooding, roof loss during the past year?” he asked. Hands went up. “How many of you got a letter from your insurance company saying you’ve been dropped or your premium has been raised?” More hands went up. “Take your bill, take your rate increase, take a picture holding it and post it on your social media and say, Where are you elected officials?” he directed. “This is not acceptable. The hurricane season is three months away, and we start this all over again. Let’s let them know they don’t get a pass,” he said.

Another man, who also did not give his name, advocated for curbing military funding to Israel.

“We’ve talked about cuts to the VA. We’ve talked about cuts to public education,” he said. “There’s one place where we need to cut and eliminate and that’s the billions upon billions upon billions of dollars we send Israel to kill people every day, every day, every day. We need to stop funding Israel and work for peace in this county.”

A woman, who didn’t give her name, wanted to know how to get law firms to stop capitulating to the Trump administration.

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“I don’t think it’s too early to talk about impeaching Donald Trump,” Jolly responded from the dais, a comment that received a standing ovation from the crowd.

“Maybe the executive order on law firms isn’t the way to do it,” he continued, referring to which articles of impeachment may be filed. “Maybe it’s the suspension of due process and sending people away to another country … Maybe it’s saying I’m not going to pay attention to what Congress is doing. Maybe it’s the defiance of the courts, saying I’m not gonna do what the courts tell me to do. If Democrats were in control of Congress, Elon Musk and the entire administration would be in front of Congressional hearings. But the Republicans are in charge, and the reason  we're in a constitutional crisis is not just because of the malfeasance of Donald Trump, but because the Republican Congress has collapsed.

"Keep an eye out for the second chapter of this because it gets much more insidious," he continued. "The moment they start taking pro bono cases for the president's favorite conservative causes, some of the best lawyers in the country are conflicted out of representing progressive cases that defend human rights across the country. That’s how insidious this is.”

A woman who only shared her first name, Penny, said she had several questions for “our missing congressman who I write almost everyday.”

“Webster, why have you allowed Elon and five hackers to have our private data? … Why did he vote for the SAVE Act? Making married women go get a passport just so they can vote is a poll tax. It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. Why aren’t we fighting that?

“Why is he against safe flights, education, Medicaid, Medicare, school lunches, Meals On Wheels, for chrissakes, SNAP, cancer research, affordable medicine, science research, Social Security, FEMA — they’re getting rid of FEMA! — IRS, FBI, CIA, CDC, pandemic response. You know what happened the last time they got rid of pandemic response? 1.2 million people died!”

Penny also railed against Republicans for replacing immigrant labor with child labor and issued a call to action to “rise up and go and stand in front of the White House.” She said she was willing to stand on the front lines. “I’m disabled. I’m ill. Put me upfront. They can kill me. I’ve died before. I’ll come back again and keep fighting. I’m not afraid," she said. "If we don’t peacefully remove these people now, we’re not going to have a county or a democracy in 2026.”

What’s next?

A 31-year-old Black millennial wanted to know how Democrats planned to engage new voters and soon-to-be voters in high school for the 2026 midterm elections.

“We could call, we could leave voicemails, we can knock on doors, but how are you meeting people in the middle and saying, Hey, I'm here?” she said. “And what can we do in your point of view to help and get those votes?  I've been to like three or four of these [town halls], and everybody's saying Join a list. Join a list, join a list, and then what happens after that?”

Calling hers “maybe the most important question tonight,”Jolly was ready with a response: “We do it together as a coalition.”

He spoke about winning Florida by boosting turnout among Democrats by three points and independents by 10 points. He spoke about sending trusted messengers into places like The Villages and Black churches to garner support. And he spoke about connecting with the local Democratic party to make it happen.

“The way to change a vote in your church or your community or your school is with your voice, not mine,” Jolly said emphatically. “The most available platform to organize, to turn out voters and persuade voters and register new voters is through the local party. The local party can stand up ambassadors in communities throughout the county. It starts with people in the community saying, I need you to consider a Democratic candidate.”