A candidate for the Montgomery County Council said she’s received threats targeting herself and her family.
“I hoped that it wouldn’t happen, this being a local race in a liberal county, but as a woman of color running for office in today’s age, I was expecting it,” said Kristin Mink, a progressive activist running for an at-large seat.
The anonymous threat was emailed to Mink’s campaign Monday.
The sender claims to be keeping track of Mink on Facebook page and wishes violence upon her children and husband.
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Mink debated whether to go public but ultimately decided to open up after talking to other women of color who received threats while they were on the campaign trail.
“We don’t solve these things by hiding them; we expose them to the light,” Mink said. “There are far more people who are going to rise up to support, and I think that’s a really important part of the story to be told, because we don’t want these threats to be, we don’t want it to be the deterrent that it is currently functioning as.”
Mink’s received threats before. They came in droves three years ago after she confronted former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
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Since posting about the threat on social media, support has poured in for Mink, including from her primary opponents.
“I reached out to Kristin first of all because she’s another human being and knowing how that must feel to have someone threaten your life,” candidate Brandy Brooks said. “Person-to-person, I wanted to say I got your back.”
Brooks said the county’s partisan primary is no excuse for this type of behavior, but it clearly illustrates the challenges facing women of color across the country as more of them seek political office.
“When people who are not white men step up to run for office to make sure that we are better represented than we historically have been, these are the additional barriers that we face
Mink helped organize the We Can’t Wait march and rally near Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon and said those demonstrators are the people whose voices matter — not an anonymous person.
“We give each other the motivation to keep going, absolutely,” she said. “We are in this together.”
She plans to report the threat to Montgomery County police.
