Protecting and Promoting Public Service: Rejecting the Violence of Divisiveness 

Liz Reyer ran for state representative in Minnesota to change things for the better, not to fear for her life or those of her family members. But the murder of her fellow representative and party leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shooting of her cross-chamber colleague Sen. John Hofmann and his wife, on June 15 has brought the unthinkable to the realm of the possible.  

Rep. Reyer was elected to the Minnesota House on the Democratic Farm Labor (Minnesota’s version of the Democratic party) ticket in 2020. Like a lot of her colleagues, Rep. Reyer — a former health plan executive and executive coach — is not a career politician. After taking a leadership role in local events and causes, she found herself recruited to run for office. Now she serves on the House Human Services and Capital Investment Committees and tries to use her health industry knowledge to improve the state’s health care system. 

In the past seven years, eight legislators from Minnesota, including Rep. Reyer, have participated in our Emerging Leaders and Milbank Fellows programs. Like her, the other Minnesotans in our programs came to politics out of desire to improve their communities. They have included a Somali immigrant with a commitment to the well-being of other newly arrived populations; an engineer and parent whose interest in local issues and attention to detail caught the eye of political leaders; and a nurse whose concern for her patients and newly disabled son led her to look upstream at the policies and systems creating the social conditions affecting them. Like the 85 other legislators who have been in our leadership programs, they have been motivated by a desire to serve and make a difference.  

Legislative work is not particularly glamorous. There are lots of committee hearings for an endless number of bills with mind-numbing details that are all very important to a very small number of people. Constituents pester you with parochial concerns. Colleagues are often way more interested in their own point of view than yours. Consensus is elusive and deliberation processes arcane. There are big fights over small issues and then major decisions can slip by with scarcely a raised eyebrow. Fundraising is a grind, and primary campaigns can be soul-sucking. 

But occasionally a state legislator can contribute to real progress that makes their community and state better. While thanks can be rare and the politics bruising to the ego, bodily harm is not an expected byproduct of the legislative process. Yet legislators say that the volume of threats and abuse they receive are high and increasing. A 2024 report from the Brennan Center for Justice summarized the findings of survey of 1,700 state and local officials: 

• 43% of state legislators surveyed said they had experienced personal threats 
• 38% reported that the amount of abuse they experience has increased since first taking public office  
• 28% reported that the seriousness of the incidents has increased  
• Larger shares of women than men, and larger shares of Republicans than Democrats, reported increases in the severity of abuse since first taking public office 
• Officeholders of color were more than three times as likely as White officeholders to experience abuse targeting their race. 

How did we get to a place where two out of five legislators report threats to their personal safety, and the apparent perpetrator in Minnesota can develop a hit list with addresses of over 70 political leaders, obtain firearms, and impersonate a police officer to carry out political assassinations? 

Rewarding ‘Unproductive Conversations’ 

Divisiveness can be good electoral politics – in campaign speeches, attack advertisements or social media. Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that politicians’ negative posts about opponents or their party were shared twice as much as comments that championed their own ideas or colleagues.   

But divisiveness can be bad for civic life. In a recent interview, Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first transgender member of Congress, pointed her finger at social media’s role: 

“I think the dynamic with social media is that the most outrageous, the most extreme, the most condemnatory content is what gets amplified the most. It’s what gets liked and retweeted the most, and people mistake getting likes and retweets as a sign of effectiveness. Those are two fundamentally different things. And I think that, whether it’s subconscious or even conscious, the rewarding of unproductive conversations has completely undermined the capacity for us as individuals — or politically — to have conversations that persuade, that open people’s hearts and minds, that meet them where they are.” 

Elected officials can fan this dynamic of disrespect and disgust with their own social media activity such as US Senator Mike Lee’s inflammatory and false posts stating that Hortman’s alleged murderer was driven by “Marxist ideologies,” or what officials choose to post/repost about political colleagues and rivals. As the leadership of the National Conference of State Legislators said in a joint statement following the attacks, “Elected officials have become targets because political differences have too often transcended civil debate. Too much dangerous rhetoric has crept into public discourse.” Politicians reap what they sow: outrage begets clicks…but also more outrage. 

This “rewarding of unproductive conversations” can overtake real life. State Senator Judy Lee has observed a breakdown in standards in the North Dakota Senate and faults newly elected members who have come of age with new norms: “Their rude behavior, which is a recent trait this legislative session, mimics Trump,” she said recently. “But it is not the way we have conducted business in the 30 years I’ve been in the Senate. Respectful disagreement and discussion can lead to good compromises and conclusions, but it was harder this [legislative session] than it ever has been.” 

These “unproductive conversations” can incubate alienated individuals who have access to firearms to take this divisiveness to the next level and attempt to eliminate a source of discontent — whether it be a Democratic state leader or Republican presidential candidate. 

There are almost 7,400 state legislators in the country. Most are not full time, and the vast majority are motivated by the same sense of public service as Rep. Reyer and her colleagues in Minnesota. If their jobs are not made safer, they will opt out and democracy itself will suffer. What can be done? 

Protecting and Promoting Public Service 

Public safety. A number of legislatures and state officials are looking at increasing security for legislators, keeping officials’ home addresses off of state websites, and increasing penalties for targeting officials. Furthermore, increased safety for the general public will improve it for legislators. In response to mass shooting incidents, 15 states have passed laws regulating or banning the use of assault weapons. Firearm safety need not be a partisan issue, as Utah’s policies to prevent suicides have shown. Likewise, 26 states — both red and blue — prohibit long guns at statehouses and/or demonstrations. 

Campaign and communicate with respect. Norms are set every day, most importantly by leaders. If public sector leaders, and each of us, are truly horrified by the violence of divisiveness, we need to offer more than thoughts and prayers. We need to practice behaviors that encourage “conversations that persuade, that open people’s hearts and minds, that meet them where they are.” Organizations such as Braver Angels and Common Ground — United We Stand (co-founded by Milbank Emerging Leaders Program alum and former Oregon State Representative Charlie Conrad) are offering politicians and communities ways to “disagree better.”  

The power of compromise. Finally, the role of compromise in democracy itself should not be taken for granted. After a two-year “trifecta” period when Democratic Farm Labor held both houses and the governorship and passed a raft of progressive policies, the state has returned to divided government, with an awkward and, at times, contested power sharing arrangement in the House.  At worst, divided government produces stasis, frustration and name-calling, but particularly in state governments — where debt can’t be issued to balance budgets — it can produce durable compromises. 

In response to messages of condolence in the wake of the murder of Representative Hortman and the shooting of Senator Hoffman, Rep. Reyer admitted that “the deep reality of the atrocity and loss is setting in” and encouraged folks to “love your people, approach the world with kindness and pursue the common good.” Our society depends upon public servants, and all of us, taking her advice and rejecting the violence of divisiveness.