As Americans celebrate 247 years of independence from Britain this week, America’s deep political divide has made elected officials the target of intimidation.
The same is true in San Diego County, where holding office is increasingly dangerous, especially for women.
This is according to a study conducted by local academics. They recently reviewed the Twitter accounts of the county’s elected officials — mayors, aldermen, supervisors and school board members — dating back to 2018. From a cache of half a million, they pulled about 13,000 aggressive tweets.
Based on them, the researchers found that women are three times more likely than their male counterparts to be threatened on social media.
“Women tended to receive much more personalized, sexualized threats or harassment involving family members,” said Rachel Locke, director of the University of San Diego’s Violence, Inequality, and Power Lab.
USD’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice lab conducted the survey in collaboration with the university’s Institute for Civic Engagement.
Locke said that while the sample size was small, women of color face “particularly high levels of threats and harassment.” Overall, female local elected officials reported receiving more threats than their male colleagues, 82% to 66%. Flash points include COVID-19 restrictions, gun rights and racial issues. Locke said intimidation comes from across the political spectrum. Moderates were the most targeted, followed by liberals and then conservatives.
“Both the survey and the interviews showed that this is not just nasty rhetoric coming from people across political parties,” Locke said. “Many of our elected officials reported receiving threats and harassment from people in their own party, accusing them of not being enough, whether that’s extreme enough, whether that’s left-wing enough, right-enough, strong enough in a specific topic”.
The USD survey findings follow a recent national survey by Princeton University of local elected officials from different regions of the country. Of the 30 interviewed, 22 reported being harassed over issues such as road repairs and affordable housing.
The next phase of the USD survey is to look for solutions to reduce the threats. A final report on all survey results is expected to be released by the end of July.
