BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Long before a would-be assassin shot and wounded former President Donald Trump, the fuse of political violence had been burning across America.
Members of Congress have been shot. One lawmaker’s staffers in Virginia were attacked with a baseball bat. In Louisville, a bullet grazed the mayor’s sweater after someone stormed into his campaign office. Someone put a tracking device on the Reno mayor’s car. Officials in South Carolina received death threats over a solar panel plant. And outside Buffalo, a man threw a dummy pipe bomb through the window of a county clerk candidate’s home while her family slept — with a message reading: “If you don’t drop out of this race, the next pipe bomb will be real.”
“There are people who’ve come to me and said, ‘I contemplated running for my town office, and I could never imagine my family going through what you did, so I chose not to,’” said Melissa Hartman, who was targeted in the pipe bomb episode and ran for county clerk after serving as town supervisor in Eden.
The attempt on Trump’s life was the latest and most stunning example of political violence and harassment playing out regularly across America, shaking the foundations of democracy and causing grave concern the atmosphere will worsen as Election Day nears. Trump and President Joe Biden each called for unity after the shooting, with the president telling the nation, “We can’t allow violence to be normalized.”
Intense partisanship, punctuated by violence, has long been a part of American politics. In 1798, congressmen from opposing parties brawled in the U.S. House chamber, beating each other with a cane and fireplace tongs. Four presidents have been killed by assassins, with other presidents and candidates wounded or targeted. Yet the attack on Trump evoked memories of more recent incidents.
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was wounded in a 2011 shooting outside an Arizona grocery store. Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, now House majority leader, was shot in 2017 while practicing for a charity baseball game. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan was the target of a foiled kidnapping plot uncovered in 2020.
Even after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol shocked the world, political violence continued.
A man with a hammer bludgeoned the husband of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in their San Francisco home in 2022. Last year, a man with a history of mental illness went to the Fairfax, Virginia, district office of Democratic U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, looking to kill him with a baseball bat. Connolly wasn’t there, so the man attacked two staffers.
And there are dozens of stories from far lesser-known political officials like Hartman.
She lost her county clerk race and hasn’t sought elective office since in her town of 7,700, home to the only factory making metal kazoos in North America. The man who threw the dummy pipe bomb pleaded guilty. Hartman said he was paid to do it by a neighbor, and she remains skittish two years later when approached in public.
In York County, South Carolina, a booming suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, County Council Chairwoman Christi Cox said that after the attempt on Trump, she felt compelled to speak about a letter she recently received. She’d sent her three kids to get the mail and read it while they were nearby — a threat to kill her unless she stopped a solar panel manufacturer from building a $150 million plant receiving council-approved incentives. Cox is a Republican; an additional letter threatening the council’s only Democrat came to county offices.
“Our country is in a very dangerous and dark place right now, and I feel like some of that is spilling over to our community,” she said at the council’s Monday night meeting. “The level of anger, hate, lies, accusations, fearmongering — it is rampant.”
In Reno, Nevada, a far-right movement has targeted local politicians. Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve doesn’t know whether someone in that movement had the tracking device put on her vehicle, and she tries to avoid going to public places alone.
“I think people really forget that we’re human beings,” she said.
In Louisville, Kentucky, in 2022, a man burst into Mayor Craig Greenberg’s campaign headquarters, firing shots. A bullet grazed his sweater. Staffers were unharmed.
“Absolutely no good came from Saturday’s heinous act,” Greenberg said Monday. “But let’s hope it’s finally the wake-up call.”
Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss called the assassination attempt a moment to “reset.” Moss, who’s Jewish and gay, faced personal threats over the years, including one from a man charged with using social media to threaten the lives of Jewish Michigan state officials.
“I hope this is a moment that all of us on all sides of the political spectrum can say we all were saved by that bullet missing President Trump,” Moss said.
The attack came a day after governors at a National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City committed to collaborating on public service announcements and other campaigns to show voters they can get along with political rivals.
“We can disagree without hating each other,” said outgoing chairman Republican Spencer Cox, of Utah.
Cooling the political climate will require both a change in messaging at the top and a willingness of rank-and-file voters to move closer to those who disagree with them, said Austin Doctor, of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center.
“It takes a lot of work and consistent commitment to the values of democracy,” Doctor said. “The question that we have to continue to ask is: How do we veer out of this potential spiral?”
In Oklahoma, Pat McFerron, a pollster and GOP consultant, said closed party primaries in safe districts encourage candidates to use extreme rhetoric. It would be toned down, he argued, in a single open primary.
“Most of the candidates I know, in their heart of hearts are people who want to make a difference who prefer an environment that wants consensus,” McFerron said. “If you’re going to be successful, you have to play the game that’s in front of you.”
Some Republicans — including vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance — quickly blamed Biden and fellow Democrats for portraying Trump as a threat to democracy. On Facebook, Alabama’s GOP lieutenant governor, Will Ainsworth, held “the radical left” responsible and said its agenda attacks Christianity and is “evil incarnate.”
Social media has helped fuel threats. In a 2021 survey of 112 public officials, the National League of Cities found the overwhelming majority – about 4 in 5 – experienced harassment, threats or violence. Most said it happened through social media; more than half said it also occurred at public meetings.
Threats of violence were also amplified starting in 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic, as public health officials imposed restrictions. Ohio’s state health director resigned after armed protesters came to her house; the health officer for Orange County, California, quit after weeks of criticism and threats over requiring face coverings in public.
And Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen has spawned threats against local election officials, making some miserable or anxious enough to quit. Many are closely watching the upcoming election.
“It’s hard to imagine there is not an election jurisdiction in the country that now is not on high alert for the potential for political violence in the 2024 election,” said David Levine, a former local election official in Idaho.
____ Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas; Mulvihill, from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Collins from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Christina Almeida Cassidy in Atlanta; Matthew Barakat in Springfield, Virginia; Bill Barrow in Milwaukee; Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan; Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; and Gabe Stern in Carson City, Nevada contributed.
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