District Judge Lewis Stoughton fine-tuned a security camera and scanned his backyard for potential hiding places on Monday morning, July 28, before he attended a sentencing hearing for the man who threatened him and another district court’s staff two summers ago.

“Who knows who will show up” if someone posts a threat to burn a public official’s house, the Chicora’s district judge said during the Monday hearing before a 56-year-old man was sentenced to serve between 311 days and two years less one day in the Butler County Prison.

The judge who presided over the trial gave Matthew P. Dec credit for having served 311 days — including 98 days in jail and 213 days of house arrest — which could allow the Butler man to be released sooner.

Stoughton in a later interview said he now expects a higher likelihood of receiving such threats.

As experts warn of an uptick in political violence, Butler County leaders at national, state and local levels alike are seeing the effects firsthand. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly’s office in Mercer County was vandalized this past weekend, and last month, the topic was raised by a Slippery Rock councilwoman regarding the borough’s mayor.

More than a year ago, an assassination attempt targeting then-candidate President Donald Trump played out at the Butler Farm Show grounds, wounding Trump’s ear, killing a Buffalo Township resident and critically injuring two others. Another assassination attempt was made against Trump in Florida a few months later.

On the other side of the political aisle, Gov. Josh Shapiro was the target of arson when his residence was set on fire while he and his family were sleeping inside in April, and more recently, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed at home in what the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota called “the stuff of nightmares.”

“Let’s be clear: political violence and vandalism are never acceptable,” Kelly said in a statement after the windows and door to his Hermitage office were found covered in red spray paint and fliers hung with blue painter’s tape.

Kelly’s district includes all of Butler County and the counties of Crawford, Erie, Lawrence and Mercer and parts of Venango County.

Alex Tuten, of Slippery Rock borough council, said at a July 15 meeting that Mayor Jondavid Longo has been encountering targeted harassment, threats and doxing. Doxing is sharing someone’s personal information online with malicious intent, such as to scare the person or cause direct harm.

“This is cruel and unacceptable,” Tuten said at the meeting. “This is not how political agendas should be supported.”

In a subsequent interview, Longo addressed the various forms of harassment he has faced over his tenure as the Slippery Rock mayor. Longo said he and his family have been regularly subjected to direct and veiled threats alike.

The harassment comes in various forms. His family members have received hostile messages expressing discontent with Longo; fake social media profiles were created to resemble Longo; and even obscene photos were sent to the mayor.

Longo said he has encountered public comments stating a wish he had died at the Trump rally, or saying he should be “86’d” — which in some contexts, the controversial term has been used to express a violent intent to eliminate a person.

“I could go on,” Longo said.

According to Longo, he has been subjected to these attacks due to his affiliation with the Republican Party, his support for President Donald Trump and the conservative views he has espoused as a public official.

“I’m all for civil discourse. I’m all for having disagreements and being able to discuss those differences of opinion in a civil way,” Longo said. “However, these things step way over the line of what’s not just unacceptable, but immoral. I can’t see how anybody could think that it would be OK to want to threaten me or my family.”

In Butler, Mayor Bob Dandoy — a Democrat — has also seen social media profiles created in his likeness, and after the assassination attempt unfolded in nearby Connoquenessing Township, he had to deal with the angry fallout directed toward the city as many media outlets reported the event happened in “Butler.”

“There’s always some anger from constituents when things aren’t addressed as quickly as they’ve liked. As hard as I push and try to make things happen, sometimes people get frustrated and temperatures can rise,” Dandoy said. “That’s one level of it.

“Then, it intensified. It reached an apex for me when the shooting of Trump happened.”

He still has more than 20 saved voicemails from people who called within two weeks of the assassination attempt.

Some callers said the city failed to protect Trump; some called it a hoax and urged Dandoy to get to the bottom of it.

“Some were going to come get you, burn down the city building, hurt you,” Dandoy said.

More than a year later, he still receives the occasional note in the mail with a threat.

“It makes you cautious and hesitant to be in public, to speak out, but you do it because it's your job, you push forward,” Dandoy said.

More recently, Longo said he has seen his personal address getting doxed. Doxing is a criminal act with up to $10,000 in fines and five years in prison per Pennsylvania law, Tuten said.

“Violence isn’t just reserved to physical harm that’s done. You can speak with violence,” Longo said. “It’s sad, and it’s a scary time that we’re living in.”

Tuten, referencing the article “Threats Against Public Officials Persist in the Year after Trump Assassination Attempt” by The Hill, said political violence is becoming normalized across the nation, requiring even local public officials to be alert to threats.

“We continue to see a normalizing of political violence, a very casual acceptance that some elected officials may be legitimate targets for violence — based on conspiracies, based on disinformation — and unfortunately and tragically, we’ve seen that has real world consequences,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University, a private university in Washington, D.C.

Samuel Chen, a political scientist and assistant professor with a focus on law and ethics at Northampton Community College in Northampton County, Pa., said political violence has historically ebbed and flowed. Chen, who has nearly 20 years of experience as a political strategist, having run many electoral campaigns in the past, has come across such cases throughout his career.

Chen recalled his time working for Pat Toomey, who served as a U.S. senator for Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2023, when someone put political attacks on Toomey’s neighbor’s walls with graffiti in 2016, or when at a 2017 town hall meeting, an attendee asked Toomey if it was true his daughter had been kidnapped — an inappropriate question which turned out to be a hoax.

What is a recent shift, however, is the severity of the acts of violence that are manifesting, Chen said.

“As far as rhetoric goes, that’s been largely the same,” Chen said. “There’s an uptick in action being taken.”

The rhetoric is worrying enough but Chen said the manifestation is worse, such as the Trump shooting or the assassination of Hortman in Minnesota.

According to Chen, while polarization does not sufficiently explain this uptick, one major trend it can be linked to is electoral messaging, which is steeped in fear now — such as the idea that the end of democracy is approaching, or that if the other side wins this election, there might not be another election.

“We’ve seen it how many times in history — fear can be that catalyst for political violence,” Chen said.

As Stoughton prepares for the political climate to worsen, he worries that the threat of violence has already escalated beyond public officials.

“The same people who threaten public officials don’t stop there,” Stoughton said.

Stoughton, referring to the July 2024, assassination attempt against Trump, pointed out that the act of political violence resulted in firing on citizens, taking the life of Corey Comperatore.

While he is willing to endure hostility, Stoughton said that citizens did not sign up for such treatment.

“Something needs to change,” Stoughton said.

Longo said while he will not be bullied into silence about his beliefs, safety is always on his mind. Everyone in his family carries firearms to protect themselves, and he prays they will never have to use them.

Longo said he hopes local law enforcement can work closely with officials to face the problem head on, and make it clear that political violence will not be accepted.

“When we start to do that, we’ll make everyone understand that there’s never an instance where they should even think that it’s OK to flirt with or allude to violence directed at members of our government or law enforcement agencies,” Longo said. “Let me take this a step further: Nobody should face threats of violence for what they believe in politically, what they believe religiously, what their sexual orientation is, what their race is.”

The Sheriffs’ Association of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — which consists of elected sheriffs across the state with varying political affiliations — has recently issued a statement on political violence related to voting.

“One of the most important roles that a Sheriff in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fulfills is to make certain that our citizens can exercise their right to vote without fear or favor, threats, intimidation, or violence,” the news release from Sean P. Kilkenny, president of the Sheriffs’ Association said. “The members of the Pennsylvania Sheriff’s Association will not condone any violence, either implied or carried out, that is targeted at an individual for their political beliefs, ideals and/or support of one candidate over another.”

Dandoy urged those running for elected office — which currently includes himself — to play a role in promoting civility.

“We have to be careful as political officials. Come election time, we can contribute to this,” he said. “We can move people to take up a cause. And we have to look at ourselves a bit and ask, how are we ramping up the heat?”

Tuten, at the July Slippery Rock borough meeting, encouraged people to attend public official meetings to share opinions with elected leaders, protest in accordance with the law and vote or run for office rather than harass public officials with violence or vandalism.

“You have all of these avenues to participate in politics and elicit political change but when you dox or threaten a local official, that is just bullying,” Tuten said.
“We don't tolerate it in grade school, and we should not tolerate it as adults.”

Chen said the solution to political violence lies within ordinary people.

“The idea of our democracy is that the power comes in the people choosing their leaders, not in overthrowing the government,” Chen said. “We lose our humanity when we don’t take this seriously, when we see this as an opportunity to score some political points … The solution is what we can do as individuals.”