[POST] America's political assassination state vulnerability index

Suddenly I feel the need to invent one

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I felt compelled to explore this concept upon listening to a WAPO story today entitled, “Members of Congress worry about lack of plan as political violence rises: The attacks in Minnesota have temporarily changed the state legislature’s balance of power, a fear for some in Congress.”

It is a disturbing story in the sense that, unlike the situation with POTUS, there is no long line of successors mandated by law.

To remind, the POTUS line of succession is:

1. Vice President

2. Speaker of the House

3. President Pro Tempore of the Senate

4. Secretary of State

5. Secretary of the Treasury

6. Secretary of Defense

7. Attorney General

8. Secretary of the Interior

9. Secretary of Agriculture

10. Secretary of Commerce

11. Secretary of Labor

12. Secretary of Health and Human Services

13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

14. Secretary of Transportation

15. Secretary of Energy

16. Secretary of Education

17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs

18. Secretary of Homeland Security.

Clearly, that makes the effort of killing the president rather pointless, yes? Because you’re just going to end up with variations on a theme — unless, of course, the Speaker of the House or the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is from the other party … and those are situations that define only about one-third of US history.

Anyway, we’ve all heard the bit about how one cabinet member is hidden away for security purposes whenever POTUS delivers the SOTU (State of the Union) speech to a joint session of Congress, because that’s the vulnerable moment when the entire line of succession is in one room — a stunningly large target and one made famous by Tom Clancy in his 1994 book, Debt of Honor. At that thriller’s climax, an embittered Japan Airlines pilot, driven mad by the deaths of his son and brother in a recent military conflict, deliberately crashes a Boeing 747 into the US Capitol building during a special joint session of Congress — thrusting our hero Jack Ryan into the presidency (he was elevated from national security adviser to Veep earlier in the book due to a sex scandal).

Wild stuff, right?

Well, at least until life caught up with art in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Back to the WAPO piece:

In the fall, a couple of soon-to-retire lawmakers [House members Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) & Derek Kilmer (D-Washington)] decided that it was time to have an uncomfortable discussion: How should Congress handle matters if their own members were the victims of the kind of politically motivated violence that has become all too common these days?

While those talks did not produce a tangible plan, the ideas behind them have suddenly become more urgent after the killing and attempted killing of two Minnesota state lawmakers in what local authorities have described as politically motivated attacks.

“Part of our job is to think about the unthinkable,” then-Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington) said in September, explaining his fear of how a narrowly divided Congress could inspire a perverse madman to target federal lawmakers.

Here’s the issue: it takes, on average, three months to a year to replace a dead member of the House.

“The status quo also creates a perverse incentive for political violence through targeted killings designed to switch the majority party in the House,” Kilmer said at the fall hearing.

And Saturday’s violence in Minnesota, in which a gunman killed one member of the state House and severely wounded a state senator, has prompted another round of discussions on Capitol Hill about what to do to prevent political violence. Lawmakers have been told that security was strengthened following the attacks in Minnesota. But so far, there’s been very little focus on how to manage the institutional fallout after violent incidents happen.

How crazy is a mass attack on one party’s House membership?

Need I remind?

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WIKIPEDIA: Congressional baseball shooting (2017)

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That was potentially two dozen GOP House members targeted by a single killer.

Then consider the threat rate recently:

U.S. Capitol Police data shows the threats against members of Congress are as high as ever — almost 9,500 last year, way above the 3,900 from eight years ago.

Problem is, to really do anything about this is to amend the Constitution. So nothing has progressed out of this legislative exploration last year, as the proposed bill died in committee.

The WAPO story notes how maybe … the fact that the shooter decided to focus on Minnesota legislators was no mere coincidence:

That’s why Kilmer and Wenstrup, when they were about to retire at the end of last year, started the uncomfortable discussions about how institutionally debilitating it would be even if they were to lose just a few lawmakers to violence.

Their warnings about what could happen in Congress have instead played out in the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The state House was previously tied at 67-67, governed by a bipartisan power-sharing agreement. But Republicans now hold a one-seat majority until Gov. Tim Walz (D) can hold a special election over the next few months. In the state Senate, a 34-33 Democratic majority has become essentially a tied chamber until the Democratic senator, John Hoffman, recovers and rehabilitates enough to return to work.

The legislature is not in session and not slated to return until early next year, so Minnesota officials feel comfortable knowing that the death of former Democratic House speaker Melissa Hortman will not cause a real political shift in power.

“I am hopeful that in Melissa’s memory that our tradition in Minnesota — while we’ll have vigorous debates, but of working together and getting things done — will continue,” Klobuchar said Tuesday.

But Washington’s political environment has become so toxic that Kilmer and Wenstrup worried about what would transpire if such a thing were to happen to Congress.

I actually explored this scenario in The Pentagon’s New Map (2004) in a segment that got cut in editing. Here’s the bit:

If someone wipes out the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court one afternoon, nothing would really change in our country in terms of our ability to maintain rule. Yes, it would be a huge shock, but it would not be hard to replace all those leaders rather quickly. I could find you 535 ex-senators and representatives living within a ten-mile radius of the Capitol itself who could easily step back into rule. Tell me how hard it would be to find nine lawyers in Washington who think they are smart enough to sit on the Supreme Court! But even beyond those facile examples lies the reality that we have 50 "farm teams" around the country, each complete with their own set of executives, supreme courts, and legislative branches. If you wipe out our national leadership, you do not really kill our capacity for leadership, because we have got more political leaders than we can count!

Now, in that bit, I was clearly making a macro argument about the robustness of our federal governing system — i.e., strength in duplication or defense in depth. But, looking back now, that self-confidence makes less sense if your political battlefield is increasingly defined on a state-by-state basis.

All this naturally got me thinking: How vulnerable is the US political system to such disabling mass attacks on a state-by-state basis?

I mean, is that a real thing?

To remind: our killer in Minnesota had a list of more than 45 politicians he considered targeting across four states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio). Say, this guy is one of a team of X assassins set in motion by some domestic terror group or a foreign government and maybe several hundred are conceivably targeted in some synchronous fashion — you know, like Israel killing all those Hezbollah members simultaneously through their exploding pagers …

So, not crazy and not out of bounds, by any means, but we’d be talking something truly unprecedented for the US.

So, let’s dive in this disturbing scenario and see what’s what.

First, we note that half of US states replace dead legislators by special elections that typically take 2-6 months to hold.

The other half replace by appointments or some combo of appointments and voting. On average, these unfold in a month or less.

So, the states that would be most vulnerable to such a threat vector — however engineered — would be those with small majority margins (let’s say a dozen or less) and special election requirements.

The states least vulnerable would be those with large majority margins (13+) and appointment processes.

A full national index would require current majority margins and vacancy procedures for all 99 state chambers (Nebraska is sole unicameral legislature), but the principle is clear: the narrower the margin and the slower the replacement, the higher the vulnerability to targeted political violence.

So, here’s what I worked out …

Among the 25 states that hold special elections (more vulnerable than appointments), you’d have to kill the following number of majority seat holders to trigger shifts in both houses:

1. Minnesota 1 (D)

2. Pennsylvania 1 (1 Dem in Assembly, but 6 Reps in Senate)

3. Michigan 2 (2 Reps in Assembly or 2 Dems in Senate)

4. Virginia 4 (D)

5. New Hampshire 6 (R)

6. Delaware 20 (D)

7. Maine 22 (D)

8. Texas 29 (R)

9. Georgia 34 (R)

10. Wisconsin 40 (R)

11. Iowa 46 (R)

12. Connecticut 57 (D)

13. Louisiana 58 (R)

14. Florida 62 (R)

15. Alabama 64 (R)

16. South Carolina 66 (R)

17. California 68 (D)

18. Mississippi 72 (R)

19. Missouri 73 (R)

20. New York 73 (D)

21. Kentucky 84 (R)

22. Arkansas 87 (R)

23. Rhode Island 91 (D)

24. Oklahoma 93 (R)

25. Massachusetts 143 (D)

The average of special-election states is 48 legislators to be dispatched.

Now, for the appointment/hybrid states (25):

1. Alaska 2 (bipartisan coalition run both houses, so it would seem there is no point in trying this with Alaska — yay!)

2. Arizona 8 (R)

3. Oregon 14 (D)

4. Nebraska 17 (R)

5. Nevada 19 (D)

6. Washington 29 (D)

7. New Jersey 32 (D)

8. North Carolina 32 (R)

9. New Mexico 34 (D)

10. Colorado 38 (D)

11. Tennessee 45 (R)

12. Montana 54 (R)

13. Ohio 54 (R)

14. Hawaii 58 (D)

15. Kansas 61 (R)

16. Illinois 61 (D)

17. Utah 64 (R)

18. Idaho 69 (R)

19. Indiana 72 (R)

20. Vermont 74 (D)

21. Wyoming 79 (R)

22. South Dakota 83 (R)

23. Maryland 84 (D)

24. West Virginia 108 (R)

25. North Dakota 109 (R)

The average for appointment states is 52 hits, so to speak.

All states combined average 50 .

So, in the average state, you’d need to kill roughly 50 legislators to flip control of the two houses of the legislature — to me, a stunningly high number that suggests this is a supremely implausible scenario.

Having said that, it it interesting to note the six most vulnerable states where less than a dozen would get the job done:

• Minnesota 1 (D)

• Pennsylvania 1 (1 Dem in Assembly or 6 Reps in Senate)

• Michigan 2 (2 Reps in Assembly or 2 Dems in Senate)

• Virginia 4 (D)

• New Hampshire 6 (R)

• Arizona 8 (R).

First off, you note that Minnesota, the recent site of political assassinations of state legislators, is the single most vulnerable special-election state.

Right on Minnesota’s heels is Pennsylvania for the Dems, where the Dem governor just had his residence fire-bombed.

Then we have Michigan, a true swing state where the current governor was the target of a kidnapping scheme by right-wing types.

Of the remaining three, two (VA, AZ) are considered purple states, and then there’s steady Blue New Hampshire.

So, I would have to say, system-wise, there is not great vulnerability at the state level — just way too many, on average, to knock off in some extraordinary spasm of political violence.

But, on an individual state basis, there is a six-pack that does strike me as currently targetable, the bad news being they’re all special-election states — save Arizona.

That’s it. My curiosity is satisfied and my sense of vulnerability is overwhelmingly dismissed in basically 90 percent of the states. Moreover, if we recall my categorization of vulnerability from above, there are only five states that currently feature a dozen-or-less targets and use special elections to replace dead legislators.

America, as I suspected and have argued, is built for political resilience — even amidst disasters and random political violence.

Am I weird to naturally think along such lines?

Yes, yes I am.

But, frankly, my profession chose me. It’s just how I think and see the world.

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