By Ken Reid

“Political violence” reared its ugly head in the Saturday shooting deaths of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the wounding of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife – all of them shot at their respective homes outside Minneapolis.

Shooting any human being and killing them is heinous, but being a former elected office holder myself, who got a few death threats in my 10 years serving Loudoun County, VA, these shooting incensed me because I understand what office holders have to deal with in their daily lives – which the news media and social media never seem to care about until there is a tragedy.

As of this writing, we don’t know the motive of the suspect Vance Boelter, who was captured late Sunday. I already see social media posts from conservatives saying he must have been a liberal because there were “No Kings” fliers in his car, and that he was appointed to a state commission by two Democrat governors. Liberal media are reporting he had materials in the car he ditched indicating he was a right winger – another example of how we need to “tone down the rhetoric” – as if the Left is not guilty of this.

Both views miss the point. This is just another continuing pattern of political violence in this nation and it’s broader and bigger than the recent killings of Israeli embassy staffers in DC, or attempted burning of 15 Jewish marchers for the hostages in Boulder, CO.

Professor Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on a podcast June 2: “We have become a tinderbox of a nation and we find volatile individuals motivated by events that happen in the world, and their attack will be supported by the community, but also motivated by the feeling there is no peaceful way to express their outrage.”

Pape said his group’s quarterly surveys indicate between 15 to 20 percent of Americans support violence as a means to an end, regardless of the issue. “They are either laughing about it or accepting it,” he said, alluding to the hero status bestowed upon Luigi Mangione, the murderer of a United Health Care CEO, on social media.

But the violence directed at politicians has increased dramatically in the last 10 years. Just a few examples:

• The June 2015 killing by racist Dylan Roof of then South Carolina State Sen. Clementa Pinkney (D) – during a bible study session at his church in Charleston.
• The firing of bullets at Republican members of Congress in Alexandria, VA, in 2017, which put House GOP leader Steve Scalise’s arm in a sling for months.
• A Kentucky Republican congressman run off the road after a town hall that same year. 
• The 1/6/2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol, where VP Pence and dozens of members of Congress were threatened and had to be sheltered by Capitol Police. There were six deaths related to that riot, three of them Capitol Police (two of those being post-riot suicides).
• The 2022 threats at the DMV-area homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe V Wade.
• The 2022 shooting of Democrat Craig Greenberg, running for mayor of Louisville. He survived.
• The October 2022 attempted killing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at her home in San Francisco. Her husband was hurt with a hammer by the deranged attacker.
• The 2023 threats on Republican Sen. Rand Paul, by a neighbor and 2023 attack on the staff of the late Del. Gerald Connolly at his district office in Fairfax.
• The assassination attempts on President Trump last year.
• The attempted killing of Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in April at his home just prior to him having a Passover seder.
• Let’s not forget the threats to school board members around the country, many of them here in Virginia. I am sure there are other incidents I have forgotten to include.

While social media surely plays a part in encouraging lone wolf individuals to do this, I also think the violence is because social media enables more people to know who their elected officials are. And as Pape noted, the average person feels they have no influence on their decision making.

In recent weeks, I have scanned various congressional committee web sites for information about investigations into antisemitism, and noticed the House Ways and Means Committee has no phone numbers on its web site. In order to email a member of Congress, many require a form to fill out where you have to provide a zip code that is in that member’s district in order to send a message.

I emailed a number of Virginia General Assembly members in the spring and got auto-responses indicating they would, in so many words, only respond to voters in their districts.

As such, elected officials and government agencies may be firewalling themselves too much from the people they serve and so, some members of the public resort to violence to get their attention.

Social media, and the COVID lockdowns, made people less sensitive to the plight of others, and treat politicians like targets vs. people who are there to represent us.

Our democracy is built on the power of the people to vote and elect people to represent them — and get rid of them in free and fair elections – not in the manner Vladimir Putin does it, or what Boelter did in Minnesota. It’s vital for office holders to be accessible to their constituents, too! They should not have to fear answering their door, or their phones, or being at their offices, nor should they need to pay for bodyguards. Why would anyone want to be a candidate for office if elected officials are subjected to hit jobs?

Regardless of party affiliation, we all should be deeply sorry for the families and colleagues of these two public servants, and afraid for the lives of our Virginia elected officials, too. Maybe we can start by learning about how the government works and not expect it to always work in our favor and accept that.