Less than 12 hours before
a gunman
disguised as a police officer showed up at
the homes of four
Minnesota lawmakers Saturday, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill to conceal the home addresses of elected officials and candidates for public office.
Senate Bill 224
was prompted by elected officials’ concerns about their safety from disgruntled constituents or those struggling with mental illness. The bill would require Oregon’s Secretary of State’s Office to remove from documents it posts online the home addresses of an expansive range of officials, including statewide elected officials like the secretary of state, 90 state senators and representatives, city councilors, county commissioners, school board members and judges. Members of the public could still obtain those officials’ addresses by submitting public records requests.
In Minnesota, the lawmakers who were shot — Rep. Melissa Hortman, who was killed along with her husband Mark, and Sen. John Hoffman, who along with his wife Yvette was seriously injured — publicly shared their home addresses like many other elected officials across the country.
In Oregon, the locations of many elected officials’ and candidates’ homes have been easily accessible through the campaign finance website maintained by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.
Oregon officials’ home addresses have been generally considered public information, in part because candidates for state and local office must reside in the district they run to represent. Some public officials, especially district attorneys and judges, have applied for and
received exemptions
. Some other officials have opted only to list their P.O. boxes.
The bill to grant them more privacy so far has cruised to passage with a 26-1 vote in the Senate in April and 41-0 vote in the House on Friday. The governor must sign the bill for it to become law. It would become effective Jan. 1.
The bill also contains a clause that allows officials to ask that their address be made public on the state website.
Saturday’s shootings — 1,800 miles from Oregon’s Capitol — sent waves of worry across the nation and the state. Authorities said the gunman targeted his victims as part of a plot to unleash widespread carnage on Democrats.
The bloodshed spurred many local discussions about public officials’ safety.
One Oregon lawmaker said they’ve started carrying their concealed weapon again.
Oregon State Police on Monday emailed lawmakers and staff a warning not to become “desensitized to concerning communications from constituents” and to report all potential threats, suspicious packages and “unfamiliar personnel or vehicles” that raise alarms.
Police said they’re also devoting “additional personnel” to the Capitol and they are “strategically positioned,” even if they aren’t visible.
Recognizing a scary moment
Oregon House Speaker Julie Fahey
, a Eugene Democrat, said Monday on the floor that she knew Hortman, a House speaker in Minnesota, through their joint service on the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Fahey said she considered Hortman a role model.
“Years of inflammatory rhetoric and political divisiveness have led us to this dark place,” Fahey said.
Fahey and
Senate President Rob Wagner
, a Democrat from Lake Oswego, each asked their chambers to observe a moment of silence.
“Sadly,” Wagner said, “this is just the latest in a troubling trend of political violence we’ve seen across this country.”
Sen. Jeff Golden
, an Ashland Democrat, called on colleagues to be cautious about “demonizing” each other when they disagree. He said he would be more careful as well.
“I think we can stray over that line in a way that has an impact on the sector of our society that is very angry, desperate, perhaps fearful, and not oriented, not tethered to the planet in the way that we would like,” Golden said.
The weekend’s killings had reverberations outside of the Oregon Legislature.
Matt Keating, a staff member for
Sen. James Manning
, a chief sponsor of Senate Bill 224, is also a Eugene city councilor. He said he and his family talked this weekend about improving their family safety plan.
Public officials, including state legislators and city council members, can “ruffle feathers,” Keating said. But there are appropriate outlets — public comment sessions, town halls, public hearings and written testimony — for members of the public who are displeased to express those views.
“That’s where the grievances should be aired,” Keating said.
Sen. Noah Robinson
, a Republican from Cave Junction, was the only senator to vote against the bill this spring. He said he agrees that publicizing home addresses is troublesome. But it also allows the public to play the role of watchdog to ensure that candidates and elected officials actually live in the districts they represent. Robinson said the question of a candidate’s residency became “a huge problem” when his competitor in 2024 listed her address as in the district, but
a lawsuit
brought by some voters contended she lived outside the district. The lawsuit was dismissed soon after because Robinson’s competitor had already been put on the ballot.
Making it personal
Nationwide and in Oregon, public officials have increasingly been worried about aggrieved individuals showing up at their homes. Portland has been a hotbed.
About 200 people who gathered
outside former Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s condominium complex
in 2020 to demand his resignation broke windows, set fires and threw burning newspapers into the building.
A small group of protesters
sought out then-Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt at his house
in 2020, yelling from a megaphone and throwing rocks at the home.
Protesters confronted Portland City Councilor
Dan Ryan at his home
in 2020 and the house was vandalized
at least seven times
in less than three months in 2020 and 2021 after he refused to support cuts to city police.
In 2024, a parked car that belonged to a family member of then-Portland City Council member Rene Gonzalez
was torched
outside his home, in what the district attorney called “political vandalism.”
Outside of Portland, Corvallis school board member Sami Al-Abdrabbuh said he has taken time-consuming measures to make it more difficult for people to show up at his home after he received death threats and hate speech; someone shot up his campaign sign for target practice at an unofficial shooting range; and a man carrying one of Al-Abdrabbuh’s campaign pamphlets demanded that Al-Abdrabbuh’s friend reveal his address.
Those measures include asking the Secretary of State’s Office to scrub his address from its website and requesting that multiple government agencies not disclose his home address in some public databases, including the state’s voter registration records.
Al-Abdrabbuh supports Senate Bill 224, saying it’ll grant other elected officials who don’t go to those lengths more protection. Now that Al-Abdrabbuh’s address is much more difficult to find, he said he will continue his work while not being afraid.
“That’s where the right balance needs to be,” Al-Abdrabbuh said. “We need to take precautions, but still do the work that we do.”
—
Aimee Green covers the Oregon Legislature. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or on
Bluesky
.
— Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.
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A day before Minnesota shootings, Oregon lawmakers voted to conceal their addresses
A day before Minnesota shootings, Oregon lawmakers voted to conceal their addresses
A day before Minnesota shootings, Oregon lawmakers voted to conceal their addresses