Short-notice Mills town hall call ‘sounded scripted,’ says mayor

After public demand to hear from him about a wide-range of topics — including the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), local job losses and frozen federal contracts, and an alleged violent incident he was named in — U.S. Rep. Cory Mills held a tele-town hall meeting on Tuesday, which people began hearing about Monday, while Mills first announced it on his Facebook page just hours earlier at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. 

The tele-town hall was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., but began later than expected.

Editor’s note: Did you leave a question for Rep. Mills following the tele-town hall? We want to know what questions Seminole County residents had for their representative that weren’t asked. Send them to us here.

The following topics were addressed in questions to Mills:

• Tax cuts
• Tariffs and the current stock market performance
• Education cuts
• The SAVE Act
• Social Security
• DOGE
• Military pay
• Drug overdoses and fentanyl 
• The border
• Congressional pay, benefits and term limits
• Coastal issues

You can listen to the full town hall here.

Editor’s note: What did you think of Rep. Mills’ tele-town hall? Let us know here.

While Mills said more than 220,000 people called in to listen, and more than 200 were in the queue to ask a question at one point — only 11 questions were asked and answered — Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said it “didn’t scratch that itch for most people.”

“The whole thing sounded very scripted; it literally sounded like he was reading,” Sladek said. “That was my impression and that was my teenage son’s impression, too.”

Sladek said she was in line to ask a question, but was disconnected, “and I was like, ‘is this a true technical issue? I don’t know,’ so I called back in and got [back] on line for a question and never got through.”

She said her question would have been “When will you have an in-person town hall in Oviedo?”

Tele-town halls are held over the phone, and callers wishing to ask a question are put on hold with an operator or representative of the speaker, who then picks which callers to send through to the live event. There is no real-time public reaction or substantive back-and-forth, as there often is during in-person town halls.

“He was able to allow a lot more people to at least listen in and hypothetically have access to the ability to ask questions, but you just can’t see body language,” Sladek said. “And I think that is something that could be helpful.”

Mills is scheduled to be at an event with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins in Casselberry on April 15, according to Sladek and Casselberry Veterans Inc., where it is planned to occur.

“I think a lot of people are a little frustrated about it because he will be here next Tuesday, and instead of having a town hall that everybody’s invited to, he’s having one [on April 15] that only veterans are invited to, and only those who will be ‘productive’ to have in the room,” Sladek said prior to the tele-town hall.

Following the event, Sladek did say doing it this way is ”probably good for him to let everybody get to release the pressure valve” for potential future town halls.

“So when additional ones are scheduled, everybody won’t storm the first one,” she said. “I think that was accomplished last night a little bit.”

At the end of the tele-town hall, Mills said he would do an in-person version in the future.

“A lot of people talk [about] in-person town halls, and we’re going to do quite a few of those in the district,” he said. “But we also want to get a lot more tele-town halls where we can actually continue to get these types of, not just interaction, but more people can hear the transparency of what we’re trying to do here.”

Mills, a Republican who has represented Florida’s 7th District, which encompasses all of Seminole County and parts of Volusia and Orange counties, since 2023, has won his two elections by 18 and 13 percentage points, respectively. 

Following the April 2 Florida special Congressional elections for former representatives Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz’s seats, which saw Republicans Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine win by much smaller margins than their predecessors, Democrats added Mills to their list of vulnerable GOP seats they believe are in play for the 2026 election.

Patronis’ 15-point win over Democrat Gay Valimont was 17 points lower than Gaetz’s win over Valimont just five months earlier, while Fine’s 14-point win over Josh Weil was 19 points lower than Waltz’s November win.

Mills made national headlines after it was revealed he was being investigated for an alleged violent assault in Washington D.C. The topic did not come up during the tele-town hall, something that Sladek noticed.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people [since it ended], and everyone’s like, ‘Well, there’s a big elephant in the room and you didn’t talk about it,’” she said. “He should have just acknowledged, ‘yes, I know that you guys know about this and I’m not talking about it.”

The alleged incident reportedly occurred at the 44-year-old Mills’ D.C. penthouse on Feb. 20. No arrests were made. Sarah Raviani, the alleged victim, has since told The Floridian that while she did “involve the authorities” and “the personal matter in question was emotionally charged, there was no physical altercation.”

“Regrettably, the situation has since been misrepresented by reporters,” her statement said. 

NBC affiliate News4 Washington reported it had obtained a copy of the initial police report in which a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer stated that during a phone call “[the alleged victim] let officers hear Subject 1 [now identified by the MPD as Mills] instruct her to lie about the origin of her bruises.”

A spokesperson for Mills released a statement denying any wrongdoing.

“Law enforcement was asked to resolve a private matter at Congressman Mills’ residence,” the statement said. “Congressman Mills vehemently denies any wrongdoing whatsoever, and is confident any investigation will clear this matter quickly.”

Mills has not been charged, and an official told the Associated Press that the case may not result in charges at all.