New York Times reporter Ernesto Londoño joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the recent murder of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, which has made headlines as local politicians in the U.S. are rarely targeted for assassination. Londoño describes how a gunman posing as law enforcement went to the homes of several state politicians, killing Hortman and her husband Mark and gravely injuring Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Londoño recounts how the No Kings Rally at the Minnesota capitol later that day honored the crime’s victims in addition to protesting President Trump. Londoño details the alleged attacker’s background and debunks conspiracy theories about possible motives. Comparing the current circumstances to his own childhood in Colombia, where political attacks on the local level were common, Londoño discusses how Trump “redrew the rules of acceptable political discourse,” and how increasing violence against lawmakers may impact who is willing to serve.
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Ernesto Londoño
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The Death of a Senator: Tommy Burks and Byron (Low Tax) Looper | nashvillescene.com (2018)
EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION WITH ERNESTO LONDOÑO
Ernesto Londoño: The very first time I went to the Capitol when I moved to Minnesota in 2012— 2022, pardon me— I was struck that there’s no metal detectors, no security screening to get into the Capitol. When I went to shake hands with the governor early on in my tenure here, and when I’ve gone to see the attorney general or meet lawmakers, it is not a heavily fortified space. It is very different than, for instance, walking into the U.S. Capitol or a federal building, where you do have to go, at the very least, through a metal detector.
Just on that front, I think there’s a recognition that greater security may be an order in a city and in a state where there’s long been a presumption that it was unlikely that people like them and elected officials like them could be targets. On the other hand, there’s always been an ease of finding out where your elected representative lives. When they filed paperwork to run for office, they need to disclose where they live to make sure they’re eligible to run in their district, and those are public records. I think now, as people absorb the shock of what has happened, there’s also a lot of conversations about whether there should be broader, better, layers of security, protecting them from people who may do them harm.
V.V. Ganeshananthan: Just a point of fact for our listeners, Minnesota is a conceal and carry state. So on my campus, for example, they will say things like, “No arms on these premises.” This is often posted on restaurants, etc. When I moved here, I was, like, the last time I saw this posted on a building was in northern Sri Lanka, on a nonprofit’s door where it’s really a sign for militants, right? But it’s here because it’s a conceal and carry state, so that’s the other bit of context.
Whitney Terrell: I just was gonna say that one of the reasons why you don’t have security details around state legislators is that we have had a history of violence against national political figures that is sad, but stretches way back. But—I did a little research here—the last time a state senator was killed was in 2015, and that was Dylann Roof’s attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which wasn’t directed at that state senator. He just happened to be there. And before that, you have to go back to a guy named Bill Gwatney, who was in the Arkansas State Senate, who was shot by a disgruntled employee, which really also had nothing to do with his political work. And then in 1998, Tommy Burks, a member of the Tennessee State Senate, was killed by his opponent. So in our history, this is very rare, and the localization of that kind of violence, to me, is what’s different and new in many ways about this. You reported, as we mentioned in your bio, on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—I reported on Iraq as well—as well as serving as a correspondent in Brazil. You were born in Bogotá. In your experience, how common is this, the assassination of really local officials like this, not national officials, in other places and in other times? And what do these killings tell us about the state of democracy in the U.S. now, if anything?
EL: I’ve actually been thinking quite a bit about my upbringing in Colombia this week, because, unfortunately when I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, this was pretty common there. You know, politicians, journalists, activists were all fair game in a very messy war. And I think we all know political assassinations are not new. In the United States, there’s been political violence here dating back decades. We’ve had presidents who were gunned down. But I would say this is really kind of shattering a sense of what was reasonably safe in the political arena. We’re starting to come to terms with the fact that political violence is becoming a growing reality at all levels in our country. We had two presidential assassination attempts last year targeting Trump when he was on the campaign trail, one that came dangerously close to blowing out his brain. We had a really scary arson attack targeting the governor of Pennsylvania recently, when he was in his home. We had, of course, the attack against Nancy Pelosi and her husband in their residence.
Elected officials across the country looking at this pattern are increasingly asking themselves, what are my defenses like, and how do I bolster them? At this candlelight vigil I went to on Wednesday, you had a bunch of elected officials. You had members of Congress. Congresswoman Angie Craig was there, and she was working the crowd and hugging people, but she was flanked by two very big and burly bodyguards dressed in black, who were watching her like a hawk and like a ticking bomb was about to go off. I just remember feeling really sad about that scene and what that told us about our politics and the environment and the hyperawareness with which local officials now have to conduct themselves in public.
VVG: I want to ask one more thing about the consequences of Melissa Hortman’s assassination, before moving on to talk about Vince Boelter as a person, and that is this has a specific electoral consequence, which is that the legislature—our local bodies were set up in a certain way, and now, in addition to the great grief of mourning, her as a person, as a public servant, her seat now has to be filled. Can you tell us anything about what—I mean, did he get what he wanted? And then what actually happens now to the seat? She spent her life trying to help people, trying to fill this office, and this office is now going to have to be filled by someone else.
EL: One important piece of context here is, if you take a step back and look at the political reality, in Minnesota, you have a really closely divided legislature, and in the House in particular, voters left that chamber evenly split, which is pretty unusual. There was even a big fight early this year about who would be the speaker and who would kind of wield control of how the chamber operates procedurally. That was the time when Melissa Hortman brokered a deal by which, even though they were evenly split, she said that the senior Republican in the House should get a chance to be speaker for the next two years. Because the legislature wrapped up its session this year and they passed a budget and all the bills were going to pass this year, nothing active is happening in state lawmaking right now.
So procedurally, what would happen is, at some point the governor will convene a special election to fill her seat. Her seat is widely regarded as a very safe Democratic seat, and I think the operating assumption is that somebody will be elected to fill her seat before the legislature reconvenes next year for a new session. So the political implications to this are negligible. In terms of, does it give one party more power than the other, I think it will keep the status quo. The question, though, I think, in the longer term is, how many state lawmakers who are really shaken by this will decide, I’ve done enough, I’ve served enough, I’m out of this. What kind of people will be attracted to politics in this day and age, to serve in jobs that have long paid very, very little and been very, very demanding and are now presumed to be a lot more dangerous than people thought?
Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Rebecca Kilroy.
