More than 40% of state lawmakers say they’ve experienced threats in the past three years, while nearly 20% of other local officeholders reported experiencing threats in the past year-and-a-half, with many expressing reluctance to legislate on contentious issues as a result, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.
Women and people of color serving in local offices were more likely to report experiencing abuse—insults, harassment, threats or attacks—targeting their families or children, and women and officeholders of color were also more likely to report receiving targeted abuse mentioning their gender or race, according to the report, which was based on a series of surveys and more than three dozen interviews with local and state officials from across the country.
Among state legislators, 38% said the frequency of abuse has grown since they first took office, but women were more likely to report seeing an increase, at 43%.
Many blamed the growth of social media and the rise of small but vocal contingents of opponents within their own parties who stir blowback when officemakers fail to adopt controversial policies, according to Gowri Ramachandran, one of the report authors.
Republican state legislators were also more likely than Democrats to report an increased frequency in abuse since first taking office, with many citing increased blowback from smaller factions in their own party when they fail to take extreme positions, Ramachandran said.
More than a fifth of state lawmakers and nearly half of local officeholders said that they were less willing to wade into contentious policy issues like reproductive rights or gun rights because of the risk of abuse, according to the report.
Others (46% of state legislators and 52% of local officeholders) said they were less likely to interact with constituents over social media, while some (12% of state legislators and 39% of local officeholders) said that the frequent risk of abuse made them less willing to pursue reelection.
“People who go into public service, they do it largely because they want to serve their constituents,” Ramachandran, who’s the deputy director for the Brennan Center’s elections and government program, told Forbes. “If that’s being distorted by intimidation and threats, that’s really problematic for our democracy.”
Politicians and government officials across the country have been the targets of a recent string of high-profile harassment. Last month, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) were the targets of “swatting” incidents, where a caller reports a fake emergency to law enforcement in order to spur a police response to the victim’s home. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading investigations and prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, was similarly targeted, as was Judge Arthur Engoron, the judge in charge of Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York. State capitol buildings, courthouses and schools across the country recently received hoax bomb threats that prompted evacuations. The threats come amid several high-profile violent incidents targeting government officials in recent years—from the 2017 shooting of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise (La.) to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
8%. That’s the percentage of state lawmakers who reported intimidation from an individual wielding a weapon, according to the Brennan Center. The number was 2% for local officeholders.
The Brennan Center made several recommendations to address the threats, including more bystander intervention and security training for state and local governments, more state-level monitoring of threats and harassment, more privacy protections for officials and more firearm regulation in places where officeholders meet with the public.
