Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., said he was injured this week when “aggressive, pot-smoking agitators” burst into his Capitol Hill office to protest his opposition to legal recreational marijuana.
“They attempted to shove open a private door, throwing their shoulders into it and injuring my wrist in the process (thank goodness not seriously),” he said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Some from the crowd were arrested. Also thankfully, my staff and innocent bystanders weren’t injured. But it could have been much worse.”
Harris, Maryland’s only GOP member of the House, is one of several Republicans who complained this week about violence and possible violence against Republicans to protest their policy positions.
On the Senate floor, Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., accused Democrats of encouraging Nazi tactics against Republicans, and said accosting his wife at the airport this week went “too far.”
And Rand Paul’s wife asked Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., in an open letter to retract his call for activists to “get up in the face” of lawmakers they oppose.
Harris said the confrontations and violence need to stop.
“This aggression, by people who disagree with my opposition to the legalization of recreational marijuana, demonstrates a growing problem with political discourse today,” he wrote. “Violence should have no place in politics. We’re all Americans. We’re entitled to express our opinions, but we must draw the line at physical aggression.”
