News of the tragedy unfolded in the group chat: Two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in their homes overnight by a man allegedly impersonating a police officer. One of those lawmakers was the former House Speaker Melissa Hortman, someone everyone in the group chat knew.
Allison Russo, the Ohio House minority leader, stood on a street in downtown Columbus on Saturday morning, reading text messages about the shootings aloud to a few of her colleagues who were standing nearby. Russo hadn’t known Hortman well, but the two shared a bond as midwesterners, Russo said, and both belonged to an informal group of Democrats in state leadership positions—women who regularly shared advice and stories with one another. When word of Hortman’s death came through, “we were all devastated,” Russo told me. “The brutality of it is just shocking.”
Russo and her Ohio colleagues were about to start marching in the Columbus Pride parade. While they walked, Russo smiled and waved, but she was thinking of Hortman. Russo felt exposed. Her mind whirred. Were her children safe? Was she? Russo and her colleagues found themselves scanning the crowd along the parade route, which suddenly felt less like a jubilant celebration and more like the perfect setting for an ambush.
On top of all the usual factors involved with serving in elected office, personal safety has suddenly become a much more urgent consideration, lawmakers told me. That’s perhaps especially true for politicians at the state and local levels, who typically have no budget for personal security and, until this past weekend, might not have thought of themselves as prominent enough to be targeted. The killings in Minnesota have given many of them a fresh awareness of their own vulnerability.
The shootings, which resulted in the deaths of Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the hospitalization of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, continue a series of attacks against American politicians. The examples have begun to stack up—most recently, the arson at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, home and, before that, the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump.
Lawmakers at all levels recognize that their jobs are, by definition, public-facing—that they answer to their neighbors and community members, that their decisions will always prompt public disagreement and criticism. Most of them, especially women and people of color, also expect to field a certain degree of social-media harassment throughout their terms in office. But for many legislators, the threat of physical violence has, until recently, felt distant. “I’ve received threats—everyone has—from all sides of the aisle,” Harry Niska, a Republican state representative from Minnesota, told me. He even got a message from someone online after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, warning that something similar could happen to him. But Hortman’s killing “brings things home in a different way,” Niska said.
Officials have responded to the shootings by ramping up security. Lawmakers in Ohio told me that Governor Mike DeWine ordered the highway patrol to increase its presence near state lawmakers’ homes. In North Dakota, officials removed private addresses from legislators’ biographies online. But to some, it all felt insufficient. “It’s almost hard to think of what security measures could be implemented to prevent something like this,” Niska told me.
The Minnesota attacks happened in private homes, and it’s not financially feasible for every state and local government to provide security for all of its lawmakers. State legislators I spoke with this week in Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, and New Hampshire said they’re considering personally investing in alarm systems and cameras at their homes. John Wills, the speaker pro tempore of the Iowa House of Representatives, told me that he installed security equipment around his home five years ago when he noticed a rise in political violence. Wills always keeps his head “on a swivel,” he said, just as he did during his years in the military.
In Ohio, State Senator Casey Weinstein posted on Facebook this week that he was struggling with the news of Hortman’s death. “I’m worried for my family. I worry I’m putting them in harm’s way by being in office. It’s a terrible feeling,” he wrote. Weinstein regularly hosts public events in his driveway, and he has one—a “Democracy and Donuts Drive Thru”—scheduled for Saturday. He still plans to hold it, but it’ll be the first such event with hired security, he told me.
Many of the lawmakers I spoke with told me that they’ve had to explain these added layers of security to their children. Russo gave her teenagers, who’d seen the news about Hortman’s murder, a few reminders: Don’t ever leave the garage door open, and don’t open the front door for anyone you don’t know. Explaining the violence to her 8-year-old daughter was more difficult. “I said that a bad person came and hurt someone that I knew, and that that person has a job that is like my job,” Russo said. She reminded her daughter that “we’re safe in our home,” but told her she should alert a grown-up if she sees someone she doesn’t recognize acting strange in the neighborhood.
Sharon Carson, the president of the New Hampshire Senate, was the only one of the lawmakers I spoke with who told me that she does not spend time considering the possibility of violence affecting her legislative activities. “I’ve always believed that the day you become afraid of your constituents is the day you need to leave politics,” Carson said.
Lawmakers from both parties worry that targeted violence could have long-term consequences, including deterring people from getting into politics. “I hope that it doesn’t cause us as representatives to pull back,” Niska said, “and I hope it doesn’t drive too many good people out of public office.” Leaders of the groups Run for Something, EMILY’s List, and Emerge, all of which recruit and train Democratic candidates, told me they are hearing more and more from elected officials and would-be candidates about concerns for their family’s physical safety. In 2023, Run for Something released a new “safety checklist” for candidates to follow and corresponding safety training about how to set up P.O. boxes for privacy, create evacuation plans for district offices and events, de-escalate conflict, and scrub personal data from the internet. The group has also worked with candidates on campaign events, advising them to be thoughtful about entry and exit points and to share addresses only with confirmed guests. “After Trump’s assassination attempt, a lot of candidates asked, ‘Am I safe?’” Run for Something’s executive director, Amanda Litman, told me. “We’ve been really honest with people that we will do everything we can, but we can’t guarantee anything.”
Run for Something and similar groups haven’t yet experienced a drop in interest, Litman and other organizers said. That’s a good thing, Russo told me, because people who turn to violence over political disagreement “want to silence you with fear.” For now, she and other state lawmakers will carry on in spite of that fear.
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