Mordecai Lee remembers serving the state Legislature in the 1970s and ‘80s and getting death threats.
“[The] very right wing militant armed group, Posse Comitatus, threatened to hang me,” he said Tuesday on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
The former lawmaker from Milwaukee and current professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said during his time in office, he usually dismissed threats. But sometimes, they were impossible to ignore. That was the case when the FBI informed him about a threatening phone conversation they intercepted where he was mentioned.
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“It sure seemed vivid,” he said of the threat. “I’ll confess that within a few weeks, we got a security system for our house.”
Following last weekend’s shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses that left two people dead, the threat of political violence is again impossible to ignore. Lee said he hopes both Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats can be united in opposing political violence.
“As opposed to: Those people are under threat, but my people aren’t,” he said.
The alleged perpetrator of the Minnesota killings reportedly had a list of other lawmakers that he planned to attack. On the list were 11 Wisconsin lawmakers, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul gave a statement to WPR on Monday following the shooting.
“My thoughts are with those affected by the horrifying events that occurred in Minnesota. Political violence is an attack on our democracy, and it is imperative that we wholeheartedly condemn it in any form,” Kaul said. “As information about this incident comes to light, we must evaluate what it means for security needs and whether any changes need to be made.”
Nationwide, more than 600 incidents of threats and harassment were made against local elected officials in 2024, a 14 percent increase from the previous year, according to the data from the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
“That’s a major factor in how people experience political violence in these elected positions,” said Kieran Doyle with Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, or ACLED.
The Wisconsin-based nonprofit tracks political violence across the world. He said cases of violence targeting political officials in the United States have remained rare in recent years.
“Organized political violence involving extremist groups has been on the decline in the last three or four years,” he said. “However, at the same time we’ve seen a rise in political violence carried out by individuals.”
Doyle said that while individual acts of political violence are quite rare, acts of violence nonetheless have a polarizing effect on national conversations surrounding these acts.
“The assassination attempt on Donald Trump, many different political figures discussed and assumed the ideology of the shooter in that incident,” he said. “That remains quite murky still to this day.”
Lee added that very few people remember the death threats that former President Barack Obama faced as a U.S. senator while running for president.
He said as the number of threats made to local elected officials rises, concerns remain in how these cases will be handled by police.
“Police take any telephone threat or a bomb threat at a school seriously,” Lee said. “I’m afraid that exact approach is now going to have to be taken by state legislators.”
Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s state Capitol recently saw updated security measures to include increased situational awareness practices, strengthened access control points and updated emergency response protocols.
Lee said an overreaction to threats would be to assign a bodyguard to every member of the state Assembly and Senate.
“This would undermine the sense we have in Wisconsin that our elected officials are just an arm’s reach away and that they’re our neighbors and our friends,” he said.
In the wake of the Minnesota tragedy, Lee wants Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans to unite across the aisle and address political violence as a nonpartisan issue.
“We’re all in this together,” he said.
