ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota lawmakers, terrified by predawn attacks on two of their own, turned to each other on a group text for comfort. A colleague had been killed and another had been shot, and the gunman was still on the loose. The 20 Democrats grieved and shared prayers — and began exchanging safety tips as they learned some of them were on the gunman’s list of targets.

“I’m hunkered down,” one wrote Saturday morning after learning the gunman had assembled a list of dozens of Democratic targets across the Midwest. “Will stay put. But I feel so sick.”

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The suspect was caught and charged a day later, but the legislators’ fears did not end. State lawmakers — who tend to be far more accessible than their federal counterparts — are weighing new safety precautions and considering whether they should erect new barriers with voters to protect themselves from the public. They see changes as inevitable, but some fear they could chip away at their ability to connect with their communities and hear directly from the citizens they represent.

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In the group chat, obtained by The Washington Post under the condition that the names of the senders would not be published, the lawmakers told each other what they were hearing from police. One texted about their friend being in heaven. Another wrote that Sunday Communion was being brought to her. Others offered birthday messages to a colleague who was holed up in her apartment. They began scrubbing their home addresses from publicly available websites.

The arrest Sunday of Vance Boelter brought some relief but left room for new worries. Prosecutors alleged Boelter had shown up at two other legislators’ homes as he stalked the suburbs of the Twin Cities, driving an SUV loaded with weapons and outfitted to look like a police car.

“It just makes us all feel so much more vulnerable,” said Sen. Sandra Pappas (D), who has served in the legislature for four decades.

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State legislators don’t draw as much attention as members of Congress even though they often pass consequential laws. In Minnesota and across the nation, they rely on frequent in-person contact to represent their constituents and secure the support they need to stay in office. They hold neighborhood meetings and shop and eat in the towns they represent. They campaign door-to-door and take questions from voters when they bump into them at churches or high school basketball games.

In Minnesota, lawmakers took action as soon as they learned of the attacks. Pappas removed her home address from her campaign website over the weekend and may remove her cellphone number from business cards she has freely handed out for years. Minnesota’s secretary of state is pondering changes to the availability of online records that list lawmakers’ home addresses. Some legislators are pushing for more security at the state Capitol and tougher penalties for threatening public officials.

But even modest changes can create more distance between lawmakers and constituents. Minnesotans pride themselves on a tradition — sometimes exaggerated but real — of polite and up-close civic engagement. Modifications here and elsewhere could reshape how many Americans view their democracy.

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“This is going to change the landscape for elected officials across the nation,” said Minnesota state Rep. Ethan Cha (D).

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Political violence has shaken American democracy in recent years. A mob threatening to hang Vice President Mike Pence in 2021 stormed the U.S. Capitol. A man broke into the home of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) in 2022 and attacked her husband with a hammer. One man tried to assassinate Donald Trump last year as he campaigned. Another was apprehended after pointing a rifle toward a golf course where Trump was playing. An arsonist in April firebombed the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D).

Threats to state lawmakers have drawn less attention but are common. In a 2023 Brennan Center survey of 354 state legislators from around the country, 43 percent said they had faced threats. The target list police recovered in Boelter’s SUV included the names of dozens of abortion rights proponents and state legislators from Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and elsewhere, according to the police.

State legislators are arguably more vulnerable than federal officials, governors and big-city mayors, who have larger staffs and, often, security details.

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State legislators visit voters on their doorsteps, which Cha sees as the best way to connect with them. But as threats grow, he fears legislators and candidates will lose their resolve to campaign this way.

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“Anybody who thinks about running for public office is going to have to have a lot of courage,” he said.

Security changes in Minnesota are likely, said Ken Martin, who served as the chairman of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party for 14 years before becoming chairman of the Democratic National Committee this year.

“I hope that it doesn’t change one thing, which is the openness of our government, the idea that people have access, the idea that people still have their voices heard,” he said.

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Two Minnesota lawmakers who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons, said they likely would not participate in parades this month that they were scheduled to attend, and officials at all levels across the country in recent years are more carefully vetting public appearances and stepping up security precautions. Some have outfitted their homes with sophisticated alarm systems and cameras. Others have asked their neighbors to watch for suspicious people.

One official in another state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security precautions bought a home in the name of a trust so the address could not be traced to them. Arizona last year expanded a program intended to reduce the likelihood that anything violent happens when harassers make false reports that send dozens of officers to the homes of elected officials.

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State lawmakers spend most of their time in their communities without staff and at any moment can encounter voters who are angry with stances they have taken. Their addresses and personal information are easy to find online. “It’s really hard to hide from people,” said Justin Smith, a retired sheriff of Larimer County, Colorado, who specializes in safety for public officials.

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Some lawmakers are trying. Minnesota state Sen. Mary Kunesh (D) scoured the internet after the shootings to see how much of her personal information was online. She removed her home address from as many websites as she could, she said, and she signed up for a service that specializes in removing personal information from online data broker sites.

“We’re just looking to obliterate any information about us,” she said.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D) limited electronic access to public records containing personal details of many elected officials, such as candidate paperwork, while the gunman was at large. He is evaluating what records to maintain online.

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“With certain exceptions, that information is public information,” Simon said. “But public doesn’t necessarily mean we have to put it on the website.”

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The political climate in Minnesota has grown more tumultuous in recent years, just as it has across the country. The 2020 police killing of George Floyd sparked protests across the Twin Cities, including outside the homes of election officials. Those tensions from the left collided with conservative anger over the state’s handling of the covid pandemic, which led to demonstrations on the steps of the state Capitol and outside the governor’s mansion. Some protesters carried military-style rifles.

Days before the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the FBI’s Minneapolis field office issued a memo warning about potential violence at state Capitol buildings. It warned that “a few Minnesota-based followers” of the Boogaloo movement had surveilled the state Capitol and observed law enforcement there during a previous demonstration. The group identified police tactics and police sniper locations and discussed how members might disguise themselves as law enforcement, according to the memo.

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Even before then, Minnesota lawmakers had concerns about the potential for violence. Among them was Melissa Hortman, the Democratic lawmaker who was killed on Saturday. For a time, she served as speaker of the Minnesota House while Republicans controlled the state Senate.

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“We talked a lot about death threats we were both receiving and how it seemed to be on the rise,” said Paul Gazelka, a Republican who was the majority leader of the state Senate during that period.

Hortman, he said, was worried about the increasingly ugly tone of the discourse and its effects on lawmakers from both parties. Social media fueled much of the animosity, and after covid, misinformation revved fringe behavior into overdrive, he said. “The things they would say they would never say to anyone’s face,” he said.

In the days since the shootings, visitors have strolled the halls of the Minnesota Capitol to take in its beauty and pay tribute to Hortman at a memorial overflowing with floral bouquets. Uniformed officers have patrolled the halls, as they long have.

To enter, visitors breeze in without passing through metal detectors. The lack of screening worries some lawmakers, who note it’s required for visits to the U.S. Capitol and many other state Capitols.

“Minnesotans have a nostalgia for a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore,” said state Rep. Esther Agbaje (D). “I like that about us, that we think life is still really simple, but I think sometimes we do need to just face the reality that we are living in a more complex and complicated world.”

State Sen. Erin Maye Quade (D) has long pushed to ban guns from the state Capitol, where the public can peer down on legislators from an elevated viewing gallery. State law allows those with permits to carry handguns in the building.

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“You can’t have signs in the gallery, but you can have guns,” Maye Quade said. “That just has never made sense to me. We shouldn’t be taking votes standing beneath people with guns.”

State Sen. Steve Cwodzinski (D) said he was horrified when he learned about Saturday’s attacks but after hearing from law enforcement, he feels safer than he ever has in his nine years as a lawmaker. Police have stayed in constant contact, and Cwodzinski takes comfort knowing Boelter is in custody.

Cwodzinski, who taught American government for 33 years, would like to campaign door-to-door the way he always has, but he’s not sure that’s possible.

“Maybe it’s naivete on my part, but I still have so much faith in my species that the good people outweigh the bad,” he said.

State Sen. Heather Gustafson (D) has long dealt with threats. She suspected she was being followed in 2023 as she and other Democratic lawmakers worked to secure abortion rights. Critics showed up with protest signs at her church, driving her from her place of worship. An angry voter wrote in an online forum that she should be dismembered, she said.

Like officeholders across the nation, Gustafson became accustomed to the hostile, fear-inducing terrain of American politics in the 21st century. But any sense of security or normalcy was shattered on Saturday.

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“I don’t know what to do next,” Gustafson said. “I’m just so scared. My kids are scared — they’re so scared.”

There are few signs the threats will abate. After the slayings, Gustafson said, a constituent left her a voicemail telling her to watch her back.