Insults and harassment wear on Wisconsin’s local officials

National survey backs up increase in abuse across the country

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Melissa Kono has been the town clerk for Burnside, a town in northwest Wisconsin, since 2013. She also trains other clerks around the state through her work as an associate professor of community development with UW-Madison Extension.

She says working in local government has always been a challenge, but in recent years she has seen how an increase in harassment is wearing on local officials across the state. “I’ve never heard them talk about ‘it’s not worth it, it’s too much’ until 2020. Before, it was ‘this is a lot of work’ and ‘this is thankless.’ But it was never ‘people are bugging me, I’m sick of listening to comments about rigging the election,’” she says.

“That did not happen before. And now it happens a lot.”

Kono says she has not been directly threatened herself, “yet I feel threatened. And it’s not in my head.”

According to a Jan. 25 report from the Brennan Center for Justice, local officeholders across the country are facing “a barrage of intimidating abuse” impacting how they interact with constituents, what policies they support, and whether they continue in public service.

The report, “Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders,” found that about half of local officeholders reported being insulted or harassed in the last three months, while 18% reported more severe threats or attacks.

Kono says the temperature doesn’t rise solely around national elections anymore. “It’s every [election] now. It’s the school board primary, it’s the town board election, it’s every time now.”

Since 2020, Kono says she has had to add material on de-escalating and resolving conflicts with “disgruntled voters” in her training for local officeholders.

The more intense climate drives some away from public service, Kono says, echoing one of the Brennan Center’s findings. “When you have a very contentious issue, unfortunately I think good people step away,” she says. “It’s unfortunate that really decent people are going to find public service unattractive because of this vitriol out there.”

But, she says, “Some, like me, are emboldened by the pressure. I feel like I can’t step down because the stakes are so high.”

Kono says she now pushes back more against harassing or insulting voters energized by false conspiracy theories: “Do you think I’m rigging the election?” she asks them. No, not you, they typically say, but other places like Madison and Milwaukee might be. “Our job is to not go along with that narrative that it’s fine here, and it’s questionable elsewhere. Part of our job is education.”

The Brennan Center report notes that harassment and intimidation disproportionately affect women and people of color, with both groups of officeholders facing more abuse related to their families and identities. More Republican than Democratic officeholders reported increases in abuse in recent years, according to the report.

The report echoed findings from a 2020 survey in which an overwhelming majority of Dane County municipal clerks reported that threats against them had increased and that they were concerned about safety. About 30% said they were at least “somewhat concerned” about being assaulted on the job. Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl received death threats severe enough to report them to law enforcement in 2020 after a far-right website published a false story claiming thousands of fake votes had been found in Madison. Safety concerns are a big driver in the pending move of county and city election staff to a new building on Madison’s north side.

“I don’t know what would pacify it,” says Kono of the abuse toward local officeholders from the public. “Win or lose, it’s still there. But I always think there’s tremendous value in face to face communication over being keyboard warriors.”