Two years after the attack on the United States Capitol, a series of drive-by shootings targeting Democrats in New Mexico is a stark reminder that false claims about a stolen election continue to pose a danger to public officials and democratic institutions across the country. country.
Although no one was injured in the Albuquerque bombings, this latest outburst of political violence underscores how deeply entrenched election denial has run in much of the country and how it is fueling anger filled with grievances against the politics and leaders of the country.
In the past year, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was seriously injured in an attack on his home by an assailant who said he was tired of the “lies coming from Washington DC’ election workers were intimidated and harassed, and prosecutors won convictions in a conspiracy to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
Another sign of the relentless threat came this week when authorities arrested a Republican House candidate from New Mexico who refused to come to terms with his loss in last fall’s election. Police say Solomon Peña hired four people to shoot the homes of four Democratic lawmakers.
“I think we’re really entering a new era where political rhetoric has become so impassioned and people with mental health issues or extreme conspiratorial views on the world have resorted to political violence,” said the New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who took office on January 1. , said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
He wants the Legislature to address political violence and said he plans to discuss with the secretary of state’s office ways to protect certain information about elected officials or candidates from public disclosure.
Torrez noted that other countries have become destabilized when extremists use threats and intimidation rather than working through government institutions. He said such violence is destabilizing and must be fought with force.
“It’s a threat to the very fabric and foundation of a democratic republic,” he said.
The lies of former President Donald Trump and his allies about the 2020 presidential election led to the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as threats and harassment against state election officials and premises. The insurgency in Washington has also contributed to a decline in confidence in the election results among Republicans.
Some Holocaust deniers ran last year for the offices that oversee elections, as well as the governor and attorney general — all losing in battleground states. The turn to violence in New Mexico suggests the lasting impact of Trump and his allies’ campaign to discredit the 2020 race he lost and cast doubt on the conduct of the election.
A large segment of Republicans, 58%, still believe Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was not legitimate, according to an October poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Peña, a 39-year-old felon and self-proclaimed “MAGA King,” faces multiple charges in the Albuquerque-area attacks on the homes of two state lawmakers and two county officials, including a home where a 10 year old girl was asleep. Peña had refused to accept his landslide defeat in November when he won just 26% of the vote in a State House race in Albuquerque against longtime Democratic Speaker Representative Miguel P. Garcia.
Peña repeated Trump’s rhetoric, claiming without evidence that the House race was “rigged” against him. There was no evidence of fraud or widespread problems in the New Mexico election.
Peña was scheduled to appear in court for the first time on Wednesday on multiple counts of shooting inside a house, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He spent nine years behind bars after his arrest in April 2007 for stealing electronics and other property from several retail stores as part of what authorities described as a burglary team. He was released from prison in March 2016 and regained his right to vote after completing five years of probation in April 2021, corrections officials said.
The New Mexico Republican Party said in a statement that Peña should be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law” if found guilty.
There was also no evidence of fraud or widespread manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 election, and Biden’s victory was confirmed after exhaustive reviews in states where Trump contested his loss. Dozens of judges – including some appointed by Trump – dismissed lawsuits by Trump and his allies challenging the result, and Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said the fraud allegations were false.
Despite this, conspiracy theories surrounding the presidential election have prompted an upsurge in threats and harassment of state and local election officials.
Cases like New Mexico’s may seem random, but they’re not, said John Farmer Jr., director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics and former New Jersey attorney general.
“They are the logical outcome of this culture of challenging the legitimacy of our democratic processes,” he said.
Farmer said tackling this kind of political violence depends in part on bringing the most serious charges possible and aggressively pursuing cases.
David Levine, a member of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former Idaho election official, said extremism fueled by anti-democratic figures and conspiracy theories posed an acute threat. He advocated for better information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies as well as changes to state laws to remove provisions that could be exploited by those seeking to spread election disinformation.
Congressional proposals to increase penalties for threatening election officials failed to advance last year, leaving state officials to look to their legislatures for support. So far, seven bills have been introduced in five states to protect election officials and their staff. The legislation contains proposals that include allowing election officials to keep their addresses confidential and criminalizing harassment of election officials, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks state voting laws.
In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Democratic legislative leaders on Tuesday announced plans for election-related bills, including those to increase penalties for threatening, harassing or revealing private information about election workers. and to pressure election officials to act illegally.
“We must do more to protect the people who protect democracy,” Benson, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Concerns about political violence have increased in recent years.
Last month, the co-leader of the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ahead of the 2020 election was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whitmer, a Democrat, was not injured. Prosecutors said the defendants were unhappy with restrictions related to the COVD-19 pandemic and perceived threats to gun ownership.
In California, prosecutors said the attack on Paul Pelosi was part of a plot to kidnap the Democratic congresswoman and that the suspect also planned to target other politicians.
Members of Congress have seen a sharp increase in threats in the two years since the insurgency on Capitol Hill. In Kansas, a trial began this week for a man who prosecutors say threatened to kill a Republican congressman.
New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martínez of Albuquerque, whose home was among those targeted in the recent shootings, said he was relieved an arrest had been made.
“These are the things that can happen when the rhetoric gets out of hand,” he told reporters on the opening day of Parliament. “Anyone who takes the step to participate in our democracy, to enter into the process, should never have to face this type of violence and have this type of fear.”
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Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan and Morgan Lee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.
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