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Unfortunately, it’s another week when there’s no way to write about politics without writing about political violence, following Wednesday’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle condemned the shooting of the 31-year-old founder of the prominent conservative youth organization Turning Point USA during a university campus event in Utah.
As of press time, a manhunt was still underway for the gunman, with the FBI releasing two photos of a “person of interest” and asking for the public’s help in identifying the individual.
It’s just a little over a year since the attempted assassination of now-President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., and almost three months since Melissa Hortman, the Democratic leader of the Minnesota House, and her husband were shot dead in their home.
In a video message Wednesday night, Trump criticized “radical left political violence” as he brought up past examples of politically motivated attacks, including the 2017 shooting of Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, at a practice for the bipartisan Congressional Baseball Game.
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country,” the president said.
Trump did not mention tragedies involving Democrats like the Hortmans or the 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shooting that targeted Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords in which aide Gabe Zimmerman was killed and the congresswoman suffered serious injuries. Nor did he reference the 2022 home attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
In a long string of social media posts after Kirk’s assassination, Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy struck on something that might be unorthodox for a political newsletter like ours to point out, but it rings true:
“Rising political violence is also a result of political belief becoming more central to identity, as other, more healthy forms of identity (local identity, work identity, family identity) becomes weaker and less accessible,” the Democratic senator said. “This is [a] hard nut to crack, but we can’t ignore it.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, appearing Wednesday night on CNN, said there was recognition now that “the vitriol, the level that is there now, the hatred that has been fomented, there’s a time that we’ve got to turn the volume down. And I think there’s a lot of the people that find pleasure in stoking that fire. And it’s dangerous.”
The Louisiana Republican added that many members are nervous about the risk of violence.
“We have great security measures for members of Congress, but there’s a desire on many people’s parts to have more,” Johnson said. “These are the new realities.”
Starting gate
New England blues: Southern New England has emerged as a key testing ground for Democrats seeking to shift the party’s image. In deep-blue districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut, several well-established House members are facing primary challengers.
Walkinshaw wins: Democrat James R. Walkinshaw easily prevailed in the special election Tuesday for the remaining term of his late boss, Gerald E. Connolly, in Virginia’s 11th District. Walkinshaw, who served as Connolly’s chief of staff for more than a decade, told Roll Call’s Jackie Wang that, like his predecessor, he hopes to be an advocate for federal workers, who make up a sizable portion of his suburban Washington constituents.
Stepping down: Texas Rep. Morgan Luttrell said Thursday that he will not seek a third term next year, becoming the second Republican from the Lone Star State after Rep. Chip Roy to announce his departure from the House.
Show me the maps: The GOP-led Missouri state House advanced a new congressional map Tuesday that would carve up the Kansas City-based district represented by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver II, Mary Ellen reports with our colleague Michael Macagnone. The map is expected to pass the state Senate by the week’s end.
Remembering 9/11: On the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some of the 21 House members who joined the military in 2001 or later reflected on how their experiences shaped their worldview and their work in Congress, our colleagues Nick Eskow and Jackie report.
A doctor in the House: Minnesota Rep. Kelly Morrison, an OB-GYN, spoke to our colleague Nina Heller to discuss the new Democratic Doctors Caucus and the rise in political violence in the aftermath of the shooting death of Hortman, who was a friend and former colleague.
ICYMI
Endorsement tracker: Illinois Rep. Danny K. Davis, who is retiring at the end of next year, endorsed Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in the Democratic primary for the state’s open Senate seat. Davis backed Stratton over two House colleagues, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a co-founder of the hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus, endorsed Republican Matt Van Epps in the upcoming special election to complete former Rep. Mark E. Green’s term in Tennessee’s 7th District.
#TXSEN: Meanwhile, Texas state Rep. James Talarico is the latest Democrat to test the theory that the Lone Star State is turning purple. Talarico, a former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, kicked off his campaign this week. Within 12 hours of the launch, his campaign said he raised more than $1 million. Already in the Democratic race are retired astronaut Terry Virts and former Rep. Colin Allred, who picked up endorsements from several former colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, including chair Yvette D. Clarke and Colorado’s Joe Neguse, the No. 5 Democrat in the House.
#VA01: In Virginia’s 1st District, the Democratic primary field to take on GOP Rob Wittman entered double digits when Shannon Taylor, the commonwealth’s attorney for Henrico County, became the 10th Democrat to join the race. Taylor is coming off a narrow loss for the Democratic nomination for attorney general in June.
#PA10: Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas joined the Democratic primary seeking to take on GOP Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th District. Democrat Janelle Stelson, who lost to Perry in November, is also running again.
Exploring: Democratic social media influencer Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, said he’s formed an exploratory committee as he considers a bid for New York’s 10th District, where Rep. Jerrold Nadler recently announced he was retiring.
Change of plans: Former Michigan state Sen. Adam Hollier dropped his primary campaign against Democratic Shri Thanedar and will instead run to succeed term-limited Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is running for governor. The decision by Hollier, who was making his third bid for the Detroit-area 13th District, leaves state Rep. Donavan McKinney as the leading challenger to Thanedar.
Early aid incoming: The Republican National Committee approved early party aid for Michael Whatley, the former RNC chair running for Senate in North Carolina, as well as for incumbent Sens. Ashley Moody of Florida and Jon Husted of Ohio, who were appointed to their seats earlier this year and are running in special elections to complete the terms of Marco Rubio and JD Vance, respectively.
Guv roundup: Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, who unsuccessfully ran for the battleground 8th District in 2022, launched a gubernatorial campaign, joining several other Republicans in the primary. In Rhode Island, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes announced a rematch against Gov. Dan McKee, who narrowly defeated her in a Democratic primary three years ago. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley is the latest Democrat trying to succeed retiring Gov. Tony Evers. And in Tennessee, state Rep. Monty Fritts entered the race for governor, joining Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Rep. John W. Rose in the GOP primary.
Nathan’s notes
Battleground House districts that flip between the parties get the most attention year after year, but sometimes it’s worth paying attention to seats that remain remarkably stable politically, Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales writes. Fourteen House districts showed no shift in their partisan leanings between 2022 and 2024, according to Inside Elections’ Baseline metric.
What we’re reading
Spending from the grave: NOTUS delved into the campaign finance reports of recently deceased members and found some peculiar outlays. For instance, the campaign of Texas Democrat Sylvester Turner reported spending $2,810.97 on United Airlines and $351.32 on the Ritz-Carlton in April, a month after his death.
History repeats: The last time we were covering former Massachusetts Sen. Scott P. Brown’s bid for Senate in New Hampshire, the lead story in the local news was often about a family feud at a regional grocery store chain. And it’s back. The front page of Thursday’s Boston Globe features an update on the latest ouster of the CEO of Market Basket.
Battleground swings: It was something of a surprise that New Jersey Rep. Nellie Pou, a Democrat in her first full term, found herself in a district that narrowly voted for Trump last year. National Journal looks at her campaign for reelection as a DCCC Frontliner.
The sporting life: Former athletes and coaches are playing in a new arena: politics. National Journal examines the new roster of sports figures who are running for office this cycle, from Paralympic basketball player Josh Turek, an Iowa state legislator running for Senate, to former NFL kicker Jay Feely, a House candidate from Arizona. Related read: The New York Times recently explored how Trump uses sports to advance his political agenda.
The count: 74 percent
That’s the share of registered voters who deemed politically motivated violence a “major problem,” according to a June NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted days after a Minnesota gunman assassinated the Hortmans and wounded a second Democratic state legislator and his wife.
In the wake of Kirk’s assassination Wednesday, Trump pinned the blame on “radical left political violence” while also citing the 2017 shooting of Scalise and recent “attacks on ICE agents.” Left unmentioned by the president was rhetoric from the right (including his own) that has been blamed for similar attacks on Democrats, including Pelosi’s husband in 2022.
A poll last year from Navigator Research found that such finger-pointing and blind spots were widespread, with the partisan identity of respondents reliably informing their views: 81 percent of liberal Democrats said Republicans were more prone to political violence, while 77 percent of conservative Republicans cited Democrats.
Regardless of who is to blame, or the bigger threat, the anxiety has been growing among members of Congress and those whose jobs it is to protect them. Last year, the Capitol Police reported 9,474 concerning statements and direct threats against lawmakers, their family and staff.
Just before members returned home in August, the House Administration Committee announced it was doubling the per-member allowance to boost at-home security services and dramatically increasing a monthly allotment that members can now use to hire personal security.
New Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan told Roll Call that member safety is the No. 1 issue he heard expressed in his early meetings with lawmakers: “We all know that the threat environment that we’re facing … has gone up significantly over the last number of years, and it seems to be going at that same trajectory going forward.”
— By Roll Call’s Ryan Kelly
Photo finish
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The post At the Races: A sad reminder appeared first on Roll Call.
