Tens of thousands of state legislators and elected local officials are avoiding hot-button policy issues such as abortion and gun control because they fear the backlash of intimidating abuse, a new report has found, the Guardian reports. A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice warned that the spate of extremist intimidation that has been seen nationally in the U.S., epitomized by the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is also sweeping local and state politics. In the fallout, elected individuals are limiting their interactions with constituents and narrowing the contentious topics they are prepared to take on. Some are even contemplating quitting public life. Such chilling of public discourse poses a threat to the functioning of representative democracy at every level of government, the Brennan Center concludes. The center conducted a survey of 350 state legislators and more than 1,350 local officeholders working in towns, municipalities and county government.
It found that more than 40% of state lawmakers had experienced threats or attacks in the past three years, while almost one in five local officials faced the same abuse over 18 months. Almost one in 10 state legislators reported that they had been intimidated by a person wielding a weapon. Many others faced death threats, including one state lawmaker who received a message that provided granular detail down to the date, time and precise location where an attack would take place. The abuse is often directly related to the policy positions that elected individuals have adopted over contentious issues such as gun control and abortion. That in turn is having a withering impact on the democratic process, the Brennan Center warns. Some 39% of locally elected officials and more than one in five state lawmakers said they were less willing to advocate for contentious policies for fear of abuse. When those figures are extrapolated for all public servants in state and local government, many tens of thousands of officials are affected.