Southern Minnesota votes on November 3. Brad Finstad is asking for a third full term representing the 1st District — Worthington to Winona, 21 counties — and he has spent the term declining to stand in a room with the people who live there and take their questions.
He has not stopped meeting people. He has been quite busy. It just costs money.
Two evenings in August
On Tuesday, August 18, 2026, the Finstad Victory Committee held an evening reception for the congressman at the Mankato Golf Club, 100 Augusta Drive, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The invitation — one of two published by MeidasTouch — lists what a conversation costs:
- Chairman: $10,000
- Champion: $5,000
- Sponsor: $3,500
- Host: $1,000
- Supporter: $500
- Friend: $250
Under his name, the invitation lists the reason to buy in: "Agriculture, Armed Services, Small Business Committees." Not his views. His committee seats — the places where the decisions get made.
That same Tuesday evening, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., his opponent Jake Johnson held a Nicollet County town hall at the Courtland Community Center. The flyer's promise, in block letters: "IN-PERSON. UNFILTERED. OPEN TO EVERYONE." Admission was nothing.
Six days later, on Monday, August 24, Finstad was at the Take 16 Event Center in Luverne for another reception, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., cash bar and hors d'oeuvres. Suggested minimum contribution: $250. Maximum: $7,000 per person, $10,000 per PAC. Checks to "Finstad for Congress."
MeidasTouch counted at least ten such fundraisers in Minnesota and Washington over six months, against zero town halls in the district. We can't independently verify the full count — but the invitations themselves are unambiguous, and the town hall number is confirmed by his own local press coverage below.
"Come with their pitchfork"
Asked by KAAL why he won't hold a town hall, Finstad said such events let agitators "come with their pitchfork and scream and have a hissy fit in front of the cameras to get their viral time that they desperately want."
The Post Bulletin asked him about that line on May 27, 2026. He did not walk it back.
"I don't regret saying it at all."
He said the people asking for a town hall don't want a conversation. They want to "interrupt and disrupt." He offered a story as proof: a woman approached him at a parade and asked him to hold a town hall.
"And I said that's great, but what do you want to talk about?"
When she repeated the request, he said he told her, "But I'm here with you right now. What's the conversation you'd like to have," and, in his telling, "she didn't have anything."
That is the case for the defense. A constituent asked her congressman for the one format where she could ask a question in front of her neighbors, and he treated the request itself as evidence she had nothing to say. Nobody at the Mankato Golf Club had to pass that test. They had to pay $250.
What he does instead
Finstad's substitute for a town hall is the tele-town hall — a conference call. In 2025 he held four of them, on February 27, March 26, April 30 and June 25, according to KTTC's count.
Two details about those calls come from his own press office:
- As many as 5,000 randomly selected residents are dialed in for each one.
- Dial-ins are not allowed. You cannot call in to join. His office says this keeps non-constituents out.
So the participants are chosen by his operation, and nobody who wasn't chosen can get on. Finstad's defense of that arrangement:
"We have reached thousands of people in the tele-town halls and there has been multiple opportunities for people to ask questions. We've answered all the questions all around the things we've talked about today. We're not screening out the tough questions; we are talking about the issues that people that hop onto those calls want to talk about. And so it's been productive."
KTTC pointed out that other Republicans do it the old way — Iowa's Ashley Hinson took an hour of questions from a crowd of about 150 in Mason City in late April 2025, cheers and jeers both. Asked whether colleagues doing that made his position harder to sell, Finstad said:
"No, I'm just focused on the way that I know best to do it in the environment that we're in. And I know that there is way more productive conversations that we can have if we sit around a table and treat each other like human beings, in the most southern Minnesota way possible."
Sitting around a table and treating each other like human beings is, in fact, what was on offer at the Mankato Golf Club. The table cost between $250 and $10,000.
Asked in August 2025 whether he would hold any in-person town halls before the 2026 election, he gave no direct answer. A year later, he still hasn't held one.
He is not too busy
The Post Bulletin followed him through a full district day in Rochester on May 27, 2026. It was packed: a groundbreaking at Rochester International Airport with Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, a working lunch with Minnesota Farm Bureau leaders, a roundabout dedication, a newspaper interview, and a meeting with a high school senior he had nominated to the Air Force Academy.
Back-to-back-to-back. None of it a town hall.
The schedule is the point. This is not a member who can't get to the district or can't find an hour. It is a member whose calendar has room for everything except the hour where anyone can stand up.
His opponent is doing the thing he won't
On June 11, 2026, Johnson announced a county-by-county town hall tour of all 21 counties in the district, running from June 20 through the end of August — open to the public, questions taken from the audience, not pre-screened.
Johnson's framing: voters "want an opportunity to speak with their representative," and "It's something that they just do not feel like they're getting with Congressman Finstad." He added: "We shouldn't just meet with the people who we're comfortable with, who kind of say the things that we want them to say."
The last stop on that tour, in Dodge County, is the day after this post. Finstad's count of open, in-person town halls this term remains zero.
The pattern is the party's, not just his
Finstad's position tracks a national instruction. After Republican members were shouted down at events in early 2025, national Republican Party leaders urged GOP lawmakers to skip in-person town halls altogether. Finstad is one of many who took the advice — Roger Marshall, who once bragged about holding 105 town halls, went more than 500 days without an open one, and Jeff Hurd left about 400 constituents waiting in a Grand Junction church, then called it "political theater".
The cost is not abstract. A town hall is where a farmer gets to ask, on the record and in front of the local paper, why the tariffs their congressman called a "short term" problem from April 2025 to February 2026 are still here. A phone call with 5,000 people chosen by the congressman's office is not that, and a $250 reception at a golf club is not that either.
What the record shows
Brad Finstad has not held an open, in-person town hall in Minnesota's 1st District, and has not committed to one before the November 3 election. On the evening of August 18 he attended a reception in his honor at the Mankato Golf Club where the suggested contributions ran from $250 to $10,000 and the draw advertised on the invitation was his committee assignments; his opponent held a free town hall open to anyone that same evening in Courtland. Six days later Finstad was at another $250-minimum reception in Luverne. Asked why he won't take unscreened questions, he said the people requesting a town hall want to "have a hissy fit," and told a reporter in May 2026 that he does not regret saying it.
Source
Fundraiser invitations published by Troy Matthews, Brad Finstad Holds 10+ Fundraisers But Zero Town Halls in Six Months, MeidasTouch, August 28, 2026. Finstad's quotes and district schedule from Brian Todd, No town hall, but U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad says he's been productive in office, Post Bulletin, June 2, 2026 (photo: Maya Giron / Post Bulletin), and Brock Bergey, DIGGING DEEPER: Rep. Finstad defends position on town halls, KTTC, August 13, 2025.
