Violence plagued all levels of American politics long before the attempt on Trump’s life

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Long before a would-be assassin shot and wounded former President Donald Trump, the fuse of political violence had been burning across America.

Members of Congress have been shot. One lawmaker’s staffers in Virginia were attacked with a baseball bat. In Louisville, a bullet grazed the mayor’s sweater after someone stormed into his campaign office. Someone put a tracking device on the Reno mayor’s car. Officials in South Carolina received death threats over a solar panel plant. And outside Buffalo, a man threw a dummy pipe bomb through the window of a county clerk candidate’s home while her family slept — with a message reading: “If you don’t drop out of this race, the next pipe bomb will be real.”

“There are people who’ve come to me and said, ‘I contemplated running for my town office, and I could never imagine my family going through what you did, so I chose not to,’” said Melissa Hartman, who was targeted in the pipe bomb episode and ran for county clerk after serving as town supervisor in Eden.

The attempt on Trump’s life was the latest and most stunning example of political violence and harassment playing out regularly across America, shaking the foundations of democracy and causing grave concern the atmosphere will worsen as Election Day nears. Trump and President Joe Biden each called for unity after the shooting, with the president telling the nation, “We can’t allow violence to be normalized.”

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