FILE - State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, shown in this March 1, 2024 file photo, has proposed a bill to make it a crime to threaten public officials in Oregon.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Holding public office in these politically fractured times often comes with an ugly reality: an email inbox containing threats of violence.
A recent tally by the city of Eugene detailed more than 1,200 threatening messages that had been sent to a wide variety of public officials in recent years – including 56 to the city’s mayor and 133 to the city manager’s office.
“We have seen an uptick among our membership of harassment, threats that in some cases have actually driven people from public service,” Scott Winkels, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, told a legislative committee on Tuesday. “I’m aware of at least three cases where an elected official either resigned or chose not to run because of their concerns for threatening conduct and their safety.”
The problem isn’t limited to local government.
“If I think about my email and the number of things like, ‘I’m going to cut off your head or burn down your house’ – those are not infrequent,’” said state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis.
Under a bill up for consideration this year, those kinds of emails could lead to jail time.
Senate Bill 473 would outlaw making a “threatening communication” to an elected official or their family – as long as those threats are connected to a person’s official duties and reasonably lead the recipient to “expect the threatening communication to be followed by unlawful acts of violence.”
The bill covers threats – delivered via any means, not just email – against both sitting officials and people vying for public office, and would encompass everyone from the governor to local water district commissioners. A first offense would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Subsequent convictions would be felonies that could net a five-year prison term.
SB 473 was requested by Eugene city officials, who say they’ve grappled with increasing threats in recent years. It is sponsored by state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that took it up on Tuesday.
The bill is similar to other laws on the books outlawing harassment, menacing and stalking. But advocates told lawmakers those offenses can be tricky to prove. They pointed to a 2023 Oregon Court of Appeals opinion that reversed stalking and menacing convictions against a man who repeatedly made violent, in-person threats against a Eugene attorney.
Backers also say the prospect of a felony conviction included in the bill could act as a powerful deterrent not available with other laws. The crime of harassment, which includes many similar elements, is a misdemeanor.
The bill is just the latest example of lawmakers responding to increasing threats against public officials. In 2022, they passed a law making it a misdemeanor to harass election workers after a series of incidents targeting county clerks’ offices.
Last year, the Oregon Secretary of State briefly shut down phone lines after online conspiracy theorists falsely claimed the office had banned presidential candidate Donald Trump from the state’s voters’ pamphlet. That inspired a deluge of calls from out of state, some of them threatening.
SB 473 is unlikely to move forward in its current form. At Tuesday’s hearing, lawmakers raised concerns about how authorities would distinguish threats written idly from threats likely to raise concerns of imminent violence. Only the latter would be subject to prosecution under the bill.
State Sen. Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, said he worried the bill as written could criminalize heated political disagreements.
“We have to make sure we’re talking about threats,” he said.
Gelser Blouin, who spoke of getting threatening emails with relative frequency, said she’s grown accustomed to threads over 20 years in the Legislature.
“When I was first here, it caused me more fear because I had not experienced that as much yet,” she said.
Blouin suggested newer officials might be more likely to flag emails as posing serious threats.
Lawmakers are also facing questions about whether they should shift – and potentially expand – their focus.
On Tuesday, Oregon Appeals Court Judge Ramón Pagán told lawmakers about months of harassment from a man whose divorce trial Pagan had presided over.
“The litigant had become delusional, had started forming conspiratorial thoughts about me in particular, and had been repeatedly pointing out that he learned where I lived,” Pagán said. Eventually the man began emailing Pagan maps that included places he or his wife had walked their dogs and other disturbing content.
But the man never threatened Pagán. The judge told lawmakers he was only able to go to law enforcement after he received an email demanding he change his judgment, which amounted to attempted extortion.
Over three months of harassing emails, Pagán told lawmakers he lost 35 pounds, changed his household routines, and got a new dog.
“My life changed entirely because he was smart enough to know not to put an imminent threat into any of those emails,” Pagán said. “But he made sure that he knew that I was going to pay for every minute that I was a judge that affected his life.”
Pagan suggested lawmakers should change the bill to outlaw communications that seek to coerce public officials.
State prosecutors are also asking for a change: They’d like the state’s Department of Justice to handle any prosecutions under a new law, since county district attorneys invariably know many local officials who are subject to threats.
Prozanski, the bill’s chief sponsor, said he would convene a workgroup to consider changes.
