Once known for civility, Minnesota succumbs to spread of political violence

From the pulpit on Sunday, Father Joe Whalen exhorted his parishioners to avoid the kind of extreme partisanship and hate that appeared to be behind the killing of one of the church's own, Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman.

It was a message that Whalen felt his congregation needed to hear, even at the Catholic church where Hortman once taught Sunday school, and in a state known for the political civility of a bygone era.

In his homily at the Church of St. Timothy, Whalen told his parish to adhere to the Christian message of peace and warned against responding to political discourse with unkindness or anger, especially when cloaked in anonymity online.

"We can choose all that by our words, by our thoughts, by our actions or we can walk a different path, and we can invite the cycle of retribution," Whalen said. "We know what we need to do."

Whalen spoke one day after a gunman killed Hortman and her husband -- a crime Governor Tim Walz characterized as a "politically motivated assassination" -- and shot and wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. The suspect, whom police identified as 57-year-old Vance Boelter, remains at large.

The shootings come amid the most sustained period of political violence in the United States since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Last summer, Trump, a Republican, survived two assassination attempts during his election campaign. In April, an assailant set fire to the official residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.

Yet the shootings outside Minneapolis seemed to deliver an outsized shock to many, arriving during a stretch of days in which protests over immigration roiled Los Angeles, a US Senator was forcibly removed from a press conference and a rare military parade rolled though the streets of Washington.

Not only did the shootings serve as a stark reminder of the spread of political violence, they occurred in a state perceived by many - rightly or wrongly - to be a haven of civic-mindedness and bipartisanship, an impression captured in the cultural stereotype "Minnesota nice".

While Minnesota leans blue in state-wide races, control of the legislature is evenly split between the parties, requiring lawmakers to compromise to get anything done. Both Hortman and Hoffman were known to work across the aisle.

"Minnesota has a unique reputation, and I think it's somewhat merited. We have typically, at least politically, not been as excessive as other places," David Hann, former chairman of the state Republican Party, told Reuters.

"But I think that has changed."

COMPROMISE

Several parishioners said the racial justice protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, which were accompanied by looting and violence, had punctured any sense that their state was immune to the excesses of polarization.

"The violence is here," said Carolyn Breitbach, 81, after attending Sunday Mass. "I think people are interested in their own agenda. They want to take things into their own hands and make things right."

One of Hortman's last acts as a lawmaker was in fact a compromise. Last week, she cast the lone Democratic vote for a bill that cut healthcare benefits for adult undocumented immigrants -- a provision she and her party did not want -- to secure a budget deal for the state. Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, teared up as she explained her vote.

Larry Kraft, a Democratic colleague of Hortman in the House, said he has seen the rhetoric coarsen in the past few years.

"How can it not? The discourse everywhere is becoming harsher and more partisan," Kraft told Reuters. "That said, I think we do a reasonable job in Minnesota of bridging that. We just did with the budget that we passed."

The 2024 election ratcheted up political tensions in Minnesota as then-candidate Trump and his allies went hard after Walz, who was Vice President Kamala Harris's running mate, over Minnesota's expansions of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Harris won the state with 50.9% of the vote to Trump's 46.7%. Trump narrowed his margin of loss from 2020, however, suggesting a shift to the right. The last time a Republican won Minnesota was Richard Nixon in 1972.

Trump condemned the shootings in Minnesota, but told ABC News on Sunday that he had not called Walz, while criticising him as a "terrible governor" who was "grossly incompetent."

Erin Koegel, a Democrat in the state House, pointed to those comments and said Trump was fanning political divisions.

"He's the one who is lighting a fire," said Koegel, who attends St. Timothy, adding that she was disappointed that her Republican colleagues in Minnesota were not "stepping up to say that this isn't right."

Koegel pointed to Hortman as a model of how a politician should behave, recalling how Hortman made her appointment to committee leadership positions contingent upon her promising to be kind and polite to her Republican counterparts.

"That was something that she always preached," Koegel said. "And even when there were really divisive issues for debate on the floor, she would always just be like let's not be angry and mean. We need to be able to debate this civilly."