Minneapolis suburb's candidates campaign amid fear and violence after political assassinations

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BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (AP) — As the nation comes to grips with the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, two candidates in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park are going door to door seeking to win a legislative seat left open by another political attack that killed a longtime state lawmaker and her husband.

The troubling political violence is a clear concern along Brooklyn Park's tree-lined streets, where voters will head to the polls Tuesday to fill a state House seat left vacant by the fatal home-invasion assassination of their neighbor, Rep. Melissa Hortman. The Democrat was first elected in 2005 and served as Minnesota’s House speaker before her death in June.

Hortman, her husband and their dog were killed early on the morning of June 14 in their Brooklyn Park home in what investigators say was a politically motivated attack.

Vance Boelter, 57, faces federal and state murder charges in the Hortmans’ deaths, as well as attempted murder and other charges in the shooting of another Democratic Minnesota lawmaker, Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, who both survived.

The Republican candidate seeking Hortman's seat, real estate agent Ruth Bittner, noticed early in her campaign that people in the neighborhood where Hortman was killed seemed afraid to open their doors.

“We are in very, very scary times, and we definitely need to get out of this trajectory that we’re on here,” Bittner said.

Bittner said the political violence — particularly following the Wednesday killing of Kirk as he spoke at a Utah college event — briefly gave her pause about running for public office. But she concluded that “we can’t cower."

“We have to move forward as a country and we have to, you know, embrace the system that we have of representative government, and we have to just do it, you know?” she said. "There’s no way to solve this problem if we shrink back in fear.”

The special election also comes less than a month after two schoolchildren were killed when a shooter opened fire on a Minneapolis Catholic church during Mass. The Aug. 27 shooting injured at least 21 others, most of them students at Annunciation Catholic School. Officials identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, a former student who allegedly fired more than a hundred rounds through the windows of the church. Westman was found dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot.

“It’s definitely come up, you know, folks have referenced the recent shootings, Annunciation and Charlie Kirk,” Xp Lee, a Democrat and former Brooklyn Park City Council member, said Thursday as he knocked on doors in the district. “Just yesterday, I was outdoor knocking, a couple of people mentioned it.”

Lee said Hortman was a neighbor whom he would often see walking her beloved golden retriever, Gilbert, around Brooklyn Park. She also met with him to offer advice when he ran for City Council.

“I can't think of a better way to honor her than to go to the Capitol and do my best in the seat,” he said.

The assassination of Kirk, which happened in front of hundreds of people and was captured on video and widely circulated on social media, has in particular rattled the nation and drawn condemnation from across the political spectrum. Federal officials announced that Tyler Robinson was taken into custody Thursday night, and investigators said they believe he acted alone.

“An open forum for political dialogue and disagreement was upended by a horrific act of targeted violence," Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in a post on X. “In America, we don’t settle our differences with violence or at gunpoint.”

Hoffman, the lawmaker who was shot and wounded in June, and his family also issued a statement denouncing Kirk's death.

“America is broken, and political violence endangers our lives and democracy,” the Hoffmans' statement said. “The assassination of Charlie Kirk today is only the latest act that our country cannot continue to accept. Our leaders of both parties must not only tone down their own rhetoric, but they must begin to call out extreme, aggressive and violent dialog that foments these attacks on our republic and freedom.”

Lee described the political climate in the wake of Kirk's killing as a “charged atmosphere."

“So I want to do what I can to really bring that down,” he said. That includes supporting a ban on semiautomatic automatic weapons and high capacity magazines.

Lee keeps a shotgun himself for home defense, he said, but assault-style rifles “are weapons of, like, war that really we don’t need on our streets.”

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Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska.