Iron bars now cover the windows of state Rep. Alma Hernandez's Tucson home. A floodlight blazes over her front porch at night. A fingerprint-activated lock guards her door, and two trees in her yard are gone after police warned they could give an intruder cover. The security overhaul came after years of escalating threats culminated last year when gunfire struck a car parked outside her house.
Hernandez, a fourth-term Democratic lawmaker who has represented her Tucson-area district since 2019, has received threats arriving through social media, email and her office phones, according to The New York Times. Her home address was circulated online, her mother received menacing calls, and in 2025 an aide's car parked outside her house was struck by gunfire. Police have not determined whether that gunfire was targeted or random, and investigators did not find the shooter, the Times reports. The bullet shattered a car window while Hernandez's brother, former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, was running for Congress, according to the same report.
That June 2025 shooting also drew separate local coverage. A bullet hit a campaign staffer's car parked outside the Hernandez family home in Tucson, with no injuries reported, according to the Tucson Sentinel. Tucson Police said at the time that the motive remained unclear. Daniel Hernandez had previously interned for then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 and provided first aid when she was shot outside a Tucson Safeway, according to the Times; he received his own first death threat just three days after that shooting. By late 2023, worry over his sister's safety led him to move into her Tucson home part-time, a arrangement that continues today.
Threats From Both Political Extremes
Hernandez has received threats from the far left and the far right, the Times reports, with the hostility tracing back to her support for Israel, her vaccine advocacy and even her first campaign for office. She said the volume of threats increased sharply after Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, telling the paper that her support for Israel has brought more violent messages over the past three years than at any other point in her career. This year, Arizona state police opened an investigation after someone sent her a social media message pledging to “find, torture and brutally murder” her and her friends, and threatening one of her two Chihuahuas, according to the Times.
The threats have reshaped more than her home security — they have changed how she legislates. Hernandez, who holds a master's degree in public health, has said she will never again sponsor pro-vaccine legislation after an earlier bill that would have limited vaccine exemptions went nowhere amid backlash. She has described the toll bluntly, saying she has asked herself, “Is it really worth it?” and that she now wonders why any 25-year-old would choose public service, per the Times.
A Statewide Pattern of Harassment
Hernandez is not alone. Democratic state Senator Analise Ortiz lived in undisclosed locations for two weeks as threats rolled in, made a list of safe places, and later installed a camera system, petitioned a court to conceal her address, and bought a gun she trained to use, according to the Times. Ortiz has said her experience and Hernandez's are symptoms of the same underlying problem. The Bridging Divides Initiative has documented 57 confirmed threats against Arizona county and municipal lawmakers since 2022, a figure the group says is likely an undercount, the Times reports.
The strain extends well beyond Arizona. A Princeton University and CivicPulse survey found nearly 20 percent of 460 local elected officials nationwide reported receiving threats during the first three months of 2026, according to the Times. A separate Bridging Divides Initiative survey found that 54% of officials reported experiencing at least one form of hostility during that same quarter, while 17% reported threats and 1% reported physical attacks. The survey also found that 76% of local officials said concerns about harassment made them less willing to engage in at least one key political or civic activity — the highest share recorded since the survey began, up from 73% in the third quarter of 2025 and 66% in the second quarter of 2025.
The consequences reach into whether people choose to serve at all. Forty-three percent of surveyed officials said they were less likely to run for re-election because of hostility, and 42% said they were less likely to run for another office, per the Bridging Divides data. Women and minority officials have consistently reported higher levels of hostility than their counterparts since the survey began, with minority officials more likely to say they are less willing to participate in public events or go out in public when not working.
A Primary That Could Decide the Seat
Hernandez is now running for Arizona State Senate against former Tucson City Council member Rocque Perez, according to AZPM News. Because no Republican is currently running for the seat, the winner of that primary is likely to win the November general election, the outlet reports. In the first three months of 2026, Hernandez's campaign raised nearly $37,000 compared with Perez's $9,400, though the geography of their support diverged sharply: 80 of Hernandez's 115 individual donations came from the Phoenix area versus 19 from Tucson, while 86 of Perez's 95 donations came from the Tucson area itself.
The race has also exposed friction within her own party. The 20th District's local Democratic Party committee has said Hernandez broke with House Democratic Caucus leadership and sided with Republican positions more than 100 times over the past four legislative sessions, per AZPM's reporting. Hernandez has responded that working with Republicans is simply the only way to get bills passed, since Democrats do not control both chambers of the Arizona legislature.
Despite the political fight ahead, Hernandez has said the personal cost of public life has already changed how she thinks about her future, telling the Times that if she could go back, she would choose a quieter, less stressful way to begin her career. She has described politicians as no longer being treated like they're human, and said she and her boyfriend are nervous about having children given the environment she now lives in. Her advice to young people considering her old path, as she put it to the Times: “Girl, wait. Go live your life.”
