When police knocked on Minnesota Sen. Jim Abeler’s door about 3 a.m. Saturday, he didn’t think twice about walking out in his pajamas to talk to the officer.
But after learning that a gunman had killed House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Abeler said, he and other public officials can no longer be so trusting.
“It’s nothing we’ve ever had to think about before,” the Anoka Republican said.
“The president worries about it. Congress, they kind of worry about it. But not the rank-and-file, midlevel state officials or now the City Council members, they would have to be thinking about this, too.”
Threats and online harassment against elected officials are not unusual in divisive political times, and security concerns flared during the pandemic, following the murder of George Floyd and after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But the recent shootings, allegedly by a man who had compiled a list with dozens of officeholders’ names, have left Minnesota politicians profoundly shaken.
For some, the episode has made them even more determined to continue their work. For many, though, it has prompted questions they never imagined they would have to consider about how to keep themselves and their families safe.
‘People don’t look at us like we’re people’
Sen. Heather Gustafson, DFL-Vadnais Heights, said legislators are feeling exposed and vulnerable.
“When you called me and I answered the phone — I’m in the middle of being on my computer right now to try to delete my address from the internet,” she said.