Editor's note: This story contains descriptions of violence and crude language.
When Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Kate Bishop publicly advocates for closing the achievement gap between Black and white students, she’ll often receive social media messages with a common theme.
“They like saying hog tie and calling me a pig,” Bishop said. “That’s a repeated refrain. Or, just having violent sex with me.”
Former National City Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis still vividly remembers an evening in 2014 when a man accosted her after a City Council meeting.
“He came up to me and started saying, 'Well, you're a bitch and you are a dog on a leash and you're wrong,'” Sotelo-Solis recalled.
The rancor aimed at these two female politicians aligns with a recent University of San Diego poll meant to gauge the threat environment for local elected officials. The survey found 66% of male office holders reported being threatened or harassed, compared to 82% of women.
The threats to local officeholders is a reflection of the hyper-polarization of politics nationwide that began during the Obama years and has been supercharged in the Trump era. Race, LGBTQ+ issues, school policies, COVID-19 restrictions and gun reform are among the issues most likely to spark the nastiness.
The poll showed the targets of the threats crossed party lines. Moderates bore the brunt of harassment, followed by liberals, then conservatives. More than half said the threats made them rethink staying in office.
UC San Diego political science professor Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start,” said that’s the goal of those menacing elected officials.
“It’s a form of verbal terrorism designed to basically beat your target into submission,” Walter said.
Vallecitos Water District Board Member Tiffany Boyd-Hodgson said she received that message from fellow Democrat Matthew Corrales, who opposed her in the 2020 election. As Boyd-Hodgson became a more viable candidate, she said the onslaughts from Corrales grew more vicious.
“I took a self-defense class and tried to focus on the issues, tried to run a good campaign and carried a knife,” she said.
In August 2020, the San Diego County Democratic Party censured Corrales for harassing her and other women with “name calling, ridicule, and obscene gestures.”
A new normal
Politicians have always been targets of wrath, but 66% percent of the USD poll’s overall respondents said the intimidation has worsened since they first entered office. Walter said the election of former President Donald Trump in in 2016 is a big reason for the jump.
“Trump was the first president who vocalized violence as a legitimate tool so we know that is increasing,” Walter said. “It tracks with a rise in all sorts of other types of violent behavior and violent language that we have been seeing.”
Social media’s ability to link like-minded people with political axes to grind — along with the benefit of anonymity — has only intensified the vitriol.
Walter said part of the current backlash against women politicians is tied to the far right. The white, Christian element of the movement advocates a return to a more traditional lifestyle where women are subservient to men.
“They feel that women are not equal to men, that they should not be empowered to make decisions that could affect men,” Walter said. “They don't even believe women should be empowered to make decisions about themselves. Men should be in charge.”
Sotelo-Solis, the former National City mayor who lost her reelection bid last year, said the hostility shouldn’t be normalized. Victims need to at least document the harassment with police.
“As public officials, when those threats are made, you need to report it because it's about that paper trail,” Sotelo-Solis said. “We’ve earned the ability to say, `This is wrong.’ If we know that it’s happened to us, what are they doing in their own household?”
Sotelo-Solis sought a one-year restraining order against the man who aggressively belittled her after the council meeting in 2014. A judge bumped up the order to three years after the man spoke out of turn through angry outbursts in court.
She said the experience heightened her awareness of her surroundings and made her more cautious for herself and her family.
“After council meetings, I would make sure that there was somebody, another colleague, one of our staff or even our police officer, who was in plainclothes, walked me to my car,” she said.
Sotelo-Solis said she also received emails and voicemails from outside National City during the COVID-19 restrictions that accused her of impinging on First Amendment rights and telling her she “should die for that.”
She also routinely got degrading comments about her appearance. People called her a “fat bitch,” “ugly” and described her as someone they wouldn’t want to sleep with.
Sotelo-Solis said the sexually graphic missives or the threat of sexual assault against women leaders is a milenia-old power play.
“It's a way to scare a person, that `We will have physical dominance over you. I can violate you, I can hurt you, I can damage you,’” she said.
Finding solutions
While the misogyny might be ancient, today’s tools, especially social media, make it more dangerous, said UC San Diego’s Walter.
Any attempt to decrease threats against elected officials is incomplete without imposing tighter controls on social media platforms, she said
“Let people put whatever they want on the internet, regulate the algorithms that right now are all designed to disproportionately favor the most incendiary material, the stuff that triggers fear and anger and hate because that's what our brains are designed to focus on more heavily,” Walter said.
She described a decision by Google and Facebook to deplatform Trump on January 6, 2021, as an example of the tech companies’ power to move the dial down from an “11 to a 3.”
“Imagine if we did something to where algorithms actually had to be designed for social good,” Walter said.
Kate Bishop, the Chula Vista Elementary trustee, still gets emotional as she recollects being called a “disgusting, fat fucking pig” or a “slob” when she publicly pushes for more inclusivity of LGBTQ children and staff.
“I'm a human being, so my visceral reaction is to just be upset by it for a little bit,” Bishop said.
She usually discusses the insults with her husband and if she or her family are threatened, she contacts police. But she said she never reacts to the harassment at school board meetings.
“Why do I want to give them more ammunition against me?,” Bishop asked. “It’s much more important for me to be able to do the work I’m trying to do than to get that one moment of feeling good about being able to fight back.”
Bishop said despite her experience, she encourages women to run for office and coaches them on how to shield themselves from the threats that might come their way.
“Keep your cool, keep your resolve to keep going,” she said.
