By JAKE SHERMAN & MARIN COGAN | 3/24/10 4:51 AM EDT
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Bart Stupak has received death threats after voting in support of the health care bill.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) says he's received messages saying, 'You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.' AP Photo
POLITICO 44
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Reps. Louise Slaughter and Bart Stupak have received death threats.
A tea party participant published what he thought was Rep. Thomas Perriello’s home address and urged disgruntled voters to “drop by” for a “good face-to-face chat.”
Vandals broke windows at Slaughter’s office in New York and Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's office in Arizona.
And angry voters are planning to protest this weekend at the home of Steve Driehaus — who’s already seen a photograph of his children used in a newspaper ad published by reform opponents.
The vitriolic health care debate has become personal — too personal, say House Democrats who voted for the bill and now find not just themselves but their families in the cross hairs of opponents.
Slaughter, a Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee, said a caller to her office last week vowed to send snipers to “kill the children of the members who voted yes.” Her office reported the call to police, who were dispatched to provide protection for Slaughter’s grandchildren. She has also been in touch with the FBI and U.S. Postal Service inspectors, who intercepted a letter en route to her home in upstate New York.
Stupak, the Michigan Democrat whose last-minute compromise on abortion guaranteed passage of the bill Sunday, said callers have left messages for him saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.”
“My wife still can’t answer the phone,” Stupak told POLITICO on Tuesday. The messages are “full of obscenities if she leaves it plugged in. In my office, we can’t get a phone out. It’s just bombarded.”
Stupak, a former police officer, said he’s not fazed by the threats or by the prospect of protests at his district office this weekend. “I’ve looked down barrels of guns,” he said. “I’ve talked my way out of it.”
But Democrats said their political opponents go too far when they bring members’ families into the fray.
Driehaus, a Democrat from Ohio, was outraged last week when a group called the Committee to Rethink Reform used a photo of him and his two young daughters in a newspaper ad urging him to vote against any health care reform bill that included federal funding for abortion. Both the group and the newspaper — the Cincinnati Enquirer — apologized for including Driehaus’s daughters in the ad.
“I’m very protective of my family, like most of us,” Driehaus said Tuesday. “There is no reason for my wife and kids to be brought into any of this. If people want to talk to me, if people want to approach me about an issue, I’m more than happy to talk about the issue, regardless of what side they’re on. But I do believe when you bring in a member’s family, that you’ve gone way too far.”
Driehaus faults Republicans for providing encouragement to the most extreme opponents of reform. Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned that anti-abortion Democrats would suffer politically if they voted for the health care bill; he singled out Driehaus, saying he “may be a dead man” and “can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati” because “the Catholics will run him out of town.”
“Mr. Boehner made comments about me and my predicament when I go home which I felt were wildly out of bounds for his position and very irresponsible, quite frankly. He’s from next door. That’s not helpful. That’s irresponsible,” Driehaus said.
vin D.: Mar. 24, 2010 - 6:19 AM EST
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