The Washington Free Beacon reports that two Republican candidates for state office in Minnesota were attacked while out on the campaign trail — and one sustained a serious concussion.
Minnesota state representative Sarah Anderson told the WFB that she was “punched in the arm” after stopping someone she said was destroying GOP lawn signs. The man wheeled on her and attacked, chasing her to her car and only stopping when she threw her car into reverse and fled the scene.
“It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go kill yourself?'” Anderson told WFB reporter Bill McMorris. “To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening.”
A second Republican candidate, Shane Mekeland, who is running for state representative, says he was “sucker punched” while speaking to a group of potential constituents at a campaign stop. He was sitting at a high-top table at a local restaurant when a man stepped up and hit him, leaving Mekeland with a concussion that could take four-to-six weeks to heal.
“I was so overtaken by surprise and shock and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for,” he told the WFB.
Mekeland did not say if he knew the party affiliation of the man who assaulted him.
The two assaults occurred just days after a Minnesota Democratic operative took to social media to declare war on Republican candidates, jokingly suggesting that fellow leftists “bring [Republicans] to the guillotine” in a post on Facebook. Rather than firing the staffer, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party suspended the staffer for a week.
Both Anderson and Mekeland believe the Democrats should have taken more decisive action.