How seriously should elected officials take increasing threats of political violence?

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes says he will not open campaign finance complaints against political candidates who use campaign money for security.

The announcement came in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

As Carl Smith reports, social scientists say they’ve seen an increase in the number of threats and incidents of harassment of public officials since 2017. Smith is a Senior Staff Writer for Governing Magazine. He joined The Show to talk more about an article he wrote on the subject.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Carl, are the types of threats and acts of violence since then similar to what we had seen before, if maybe in larger numbers?

CARL SMITH: I think there are more threats, for sure. I even received a death threat about a story I wrote about a policy matter. I think in that context, though, it’s really important to emphasize that it’s almost like an inverted triangle. The width and the breadth of rhetoric is wide. The number of folks who would actually act on that rhetoric is still very, very small.

There’s a group called the Polarization Research Lab that just did a survey. Only just a minuscule number of Americans would actually do anything violent, even though they might answer a survey question that says, “Do you believe violence might be necessary?” It’s still not the norm. But the noise is much, much louder.

BRODIE: Well, the noise louder and certainly some of the acts have certainly been pretty dramatic and unfortunate. I mean, you think about the murder of Charlie Kirk. You think about the murder of a state lawmaker in Minnesota, the attempted assassination of a state lawmaker in Minnesota. You think about the arson at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence.

Like, these are pretty high-profile incidents.

SMITH: They’re horrible. I’m not saying that things aren’t happening. I just wanted to underscore: It’s still not everybody who’s willing to do that. But there are things that foment that kind of behavior that could and should be addressed and corrected.

BRODIE: Are there events happening that maybe we don’t hear quite so much about? Are there threats or actually acts of violence that don’t make the headlines?

SMITH: Well, I mean, threats for sure. There’s a Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton, they just did a survey. They found about 300 threat and harassment incidents involving local government officials just in the first half of this year.

BRODIE: Wow.

SMITH: There are more ways to do it, too. You know, email, social media — there’s more channels for that kind of communication.

So, it’s not going down, and it’s surprising who all is affected. It might be less surprising for a politician who’s out campaigning all the time to get some pushback, but it’s happening to teachers, it’s happening even to police, it’s happening to election officials, even public health officials.

BRODIE: Yeah. Let me ask you about a quote that you have in your piece from the author of a study about this topic where they asked, you know, “What should be done about this?” Folks basically said, you know, “Both Democrats and Republicans, both sides of the political aisle, need to say, ‘This is not acceptable, this is not OK, this doesn’t have a place in our society, in our country.’”

It seems as though, at least to some extent, that tends to happen after these kinds of events. And, yet, as you report, and as we all know, these kinds of events continue to happen.

SMITH: Right. Well, unfortunately, at the political level, in that world, attacking the opposite side has been seized upon as the most effective strategy.

BRODIE: So does that indicate to you that just sort of toning down the rhetoric, trying to not say the kinds of maybe inflammatory things or inciting things that people in politics tend to say, that maybe stopping doing that isn’t enough to end this?

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SMITH: Well, it won’t end if there isn’t less of that. But it’s interesting, there’s a group called the Polarization Research Lab. I may have mentioned that they just did an interesting survey. And the way they look at it, the big threat isn’t violence, because almost no one will do that, but it’s that folks will give up fundamental freedoms for protection against the possibility of violence, if that makes any sense.

BRODIE: I’m also curious about whether or not there’s a consensus to some degree about some of the — I guess you could call them practical steps that folks in elected office might take to try to protect themselves. Things like having extra security or being careful about what they post online or not having a bumper sticker of their kids’ school on their car or something like that.

Is there a sense of whether things like that work or if they’re just things that don’t really make much of a difference?

SMITH: No, I think it could work. I think there’s agreement about restricting access to personal information of officeholders. So in some cases, you can’t restrict it altogether because where they live is part of their eligibility for office. But making it harder to know exactly where people live, you know, who their children are, maybe not posting what they’re doing on social media in case somebody’s watching them, so it’s harder for people to know where they are and what they’re doing.

There are some folks thinking more about not allowing firearms at rallies or campaign events or whatnot.

BRODIE: Let me ask you about an effort that you wrote about from the Carter Center, that includes folks in Arizona, where there’s a network sort of led by a Republican and a Democrat to try to basically build trust and foster conversation in this country, in the political system in this country. Can you tell me a little bit about what they do and sort of what the results have been that they’ve seen?

SMITH: Sure. In essence, they’re just fostering connection and conversation among people who think that the basic concepts of our democracy make sense and want to stick to them, who don’t doubt that election officials want to do a good job, who don’t doubt the integrity of those people or their processes. And just get those folks talking to each other and also communicating more about how things work, opening the doors between those people in the community and people in government so that they can work together.

Because again, as I’ve said earlier, it’s just not true that when you get to the level of citizens that they violently disagree. The violent disagreement is being used, unfortunately, for political aims.

BRODIE: And yet, though, there are polls. There’s a poll that came out not that long ago that suggested a not insignificant percentage of Americans thought that political violence might be necessary.

SMITH: That’s true. However, as the Polarization Research lab said, almost none are willing to commit it. So, what do they really mean by that? I think they mean they’re frustrated. And one of the things that’s fueling that, again, is this divisive rhetoric that makes them afraid. So they may be thinking violence is necessary because the other guy is going to be violent toward them, so I might have to be violent in return.

It’s something that feeds on itself to no productive end.