A special election in Minnesota on Tuesday will determine who will fill the seat of the late Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman, just over three months after she and her husband were fatally shot in what Gov. Tim Walz at the time called “a politically motivated assassination” and less than a week after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kirk’s death is the latest instance of political violence this year, following the Hortman killing in June and an arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in April. It has yet again brought tension about the increasing violence surrounding politics to the forefront of the national conversation and to the race for Hortman’s seat in the suburbs of Minneapolis between Democrat Xp Lee and Republican Ruth Bittner.
Lee, a health equity analyst and former Brooklyn Park City Council member, will face off against Bittner, a real estate agent who has never run for public office. Top Minnesota Democrats such as Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar have campaigned for Lee in recent days.
Speaking to the Associated Press while campaigning over the weekend, Bittner said the Kirk killing made her briefly hesitate about running for public office but said “we can’t cower” to fear, acknowledging that “we are in very, very scary times.”
Lee, also speaking to the AP while out knocking on doors, said the political climate in the United States after the Kirk assassination is a “charged atmosphere” and emphasized he wants to bring the temperature down if elected to his former neighbor Hortman’s vacant seat. Lee told the AP he used to see Hortman walking her golden retriever around the neighborhood.
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