On Monday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that a Democratic state House candidate in Pennsylvania was allegedly brutally assaulted in his own backyard, after a series of threatening incidents that lead him to suspect he is being politically targeted.
“Democrat Richard Ringer said he was bloodied and knocked unconscious by an attacker in his back yard around 5 a.m.,” said the report. “‘A guy was standing with his back to me. I went and bear-hugged him, wrestled, ended up on the ground,’ said Mr. Ringer, 69, who is running in a contested race for the open 51st House District seat against Republican Charity Grimm Krupa. ‘He was larger than I am and he pinned me down on my left side. … He hit me 10 to 12 times in the head, in the face and by the eye and he knocked me out.'”
“Mr. Ringer has also had two incidents of vandalism to his home that have occurred within the last two weeks. One, a threatening apparently election-related message spray-painted on his garage door and the other a brick thrown through a storm door window. The spray-painted message was partially washed off by the rain by the time Mr. Ringer saw it, but what was left clearly visible were the words ‘your race’ and ‘dead,'” said the report. “Taken together, Mr. Ringer said he can’t help but be suspicious that the three incidents within three weeks of the general election are related to his candidacy, especially considering how ‘calm and quiet a neighborhood’ it is.”
According to the report, Ringer was unable to provide a further physical description of the man who had attacked him at his home.
This comes as officials around the country sound the alarm about violent threats levied against elected officials and their families, one of the most high-profile being the home invasion and bludgeoning of Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at their house in San Francisco.
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Particular anger and threats have been directed at election officials, driven by Republican conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election having been stolen by “mules.” In one case, the entire election staff of Republican-favoring Gillespie County, Texas stepped down amid harassment.
Image by Tony Webster via Flickr and a CC license