Helmer: Threats are local, as well as national

Like many of you, I watched with horror the video of shots fired at former President Donald Trump that killed an innocent rally goer and wounded others, along with former President Trump himself earlier this month.

I am heartened that President Trump is OK and devastated that others are not. This act of violence is an escalation of a terrible track record over the past decade in our politics. It builds on the deadly violence of January 6, the shooting of Rep Steven Scalise, and the beating nearly to death with a hammer of Paul Pelosi, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

These threats aren’t just felt at the national level. Since January 6th, elected officials at every level have faced threats of violence to themselves and their families. Many of my colleagues, including me, have faced death threats.

In 2020, a man directly messaged my wife on Facebook telling her he hoped I had a good life insurance policy; he was later convicted and jailed for threatening a different official. Earlier this year, police responded to a threat to me by increasing their presence at our campaign office.

My experience is not unique but part of a troubling trend among families of many public officials about the risks not only to ourselves but to our families. As campaigns chair for the Virginia Democratic House Caucus last year, many otherwise promising public servants told me that they would not run due to concerns about their own safety.

I believe that our democracy is fragile. This great experiment in self-government requires the efforts of all of us to keep it together. I believe no less than I did before this shooting that the willingness to use force to overturn elections, to use violence against political opponents, to declare a President above the law and to sow misinformation are grave threats.

Since 2016, I have felt that we sit on the precipice and that sparks keep falling near dried kindling – we’ve been fortunate that the entire edifice has not caught fire. There is no guarantee it won’t.

In a society as armed and divided as ours, our fate relies on the kindness we extend to one another as neighbors and as fellow Americans, the faith we build in our institutions and the willingness to abide by common rules. The answer to political violence cannot only be provided by elected officials. It requires all of us to put love of country above the differences that separate us ideologically.

I have often said that I never asked the soldier sitting next to me in a Humvee in Afghanistan or Iraq whether they were a Republican, Democrat or independent. Rather, we worked together based on a shared mission and purpose to do what we could to advance the interests of our country.

This vision, though, should not belie the real disagreements we would have on how best to accomplish our missions and the vigorous debates that took place before we executed a raid or engaged in a training or intelligence mission. Ultimately though, we would align on a path forward or the commander would make a decision, and we would execute.

In the wake of the attack on former President Trump, my great hope is that all of us will engage in conversations in which we listen to those who don’t agree with us, in which we refuse to accept the logic of violence, in which we advocate for more democracy not less, and in which we find a way forward together to protect this country that you and I and most of our fellow Americans find so dear.

I plan to keep engaging in those conversations, and I hope you will, too.

Dan Helmer has served in the Virginia House of Delegates since 2021. He is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and lives in Fairfax County with his wife, Karen, a public school teacher, and their two sons.