Thirty-one elected officials in Colorado have asked to remove their personal contact information from a state campaign finance database in the wake of Saturday’s shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers.
The state’s TRACER website was taken offline Saturday after the attack, said Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees the website. The decision was jointly made between the office and legislative leadership, Todd said, so that state lawmakers and other elected officials could file new requests to strike their addresses and phone numbers from the publicly accessible database.
Thus far, at least 31 elected officials have filed the requests.
“In light of the weekend’s tragic events in Minnesota and out of an abundance of caution for the safety of Colorado’s elected leaders, the Department of State made a determination to take the public-facing campaign finance reporting website down briefly after consulting with legislative leadership,” Todd said.
The website’s temporary removal was first reported Monday by Axios.
The decision came shortly after two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota were shot in their homes early Saturday morning. Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former House Speaker, and her husband, Mark, were both killed. Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were earlier shot by the same gunman, also in their home, and survived.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the attacks a “politically motivated assassination,” and police found a list of other lawmakers and elected officials in the suspect’s car.
On Sunday, police arrested 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter in connection with the shootings.
Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie said Monday that she knew Hortman — both had served as Democratic speakers at the same time — and that the news of her death was a “devastating moment for me personally and professionally.”
Hortman, she said, was “the epitome of what a public servant should be.”
On Saturday morning, legislative leaders reached out to Gov. Jared Polis’ office, to the state Department of Public Safety and to the Colorado State Patrol, which provides security to the state Capitol, McCluskie said. Lawmakers from both parties were also provided information about how to redact their information from TRACER.
Elected officials and candidates for state- or county-level offices are required to publicly file their personal information to TRACER. A campaign finance rule has allowed candidates and officials “who believe their safety or the safety of an immediate family member may be in jeopardy” to request that the information to be redacted, Todd said.
McCluskie said state legislators were told to reach out to the State Patrol if they had security concerns, and some had done so. She said she had contacted her local sheriff, in Summit County, about her own security.
State Patrol spokesman Trooper Gabriel Moltrer declined to comment on any additional security measures offered to or requested by lawmakers or other elected officials in the wake of the shootings.
It’s too early to say if the Minnesota attack will result in more permanent security changes in Colorado, McCluskie said.
“This incident is still very fresh and raw, but it lingers with us,” she said while at the Capitol for a House Democratic caucus meeting. “We’ll continue to prioritize security. We will continue to look to CSP and the Department of Public Safety for recommendations on any additional measures we should be taking.”
“I haven’t talked to any elected official who isn’t touched by this,” she continued. “We sign up for these jobs to do good things in the world, and the hate and the vitriol we hear in our sphere, in our communities and in society … that’s unacceptable.”
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