Far-right militant Ammon Bundy is potentially running for governor of Idaho, which is alarming the state's residents and lawmakers who have watched him wage intimidation campaigns against public officials over the last year.
The Daily Beast reports that Bundy has used the novel coronavirus pandemic to aggressively protest outside of elected officials' homes, where his followers have banged on their walls and have left threatening symbols on their lawns.
Republican Idaho State Rep. Greg Chaney, for instance, found a pitchfork, a torch and "a stuffed animal wearing a 'Chaney' shirt and hanging from a rope around its neck" on his property after a Bundy protest, the website reported.
Former Democratic Ada County commissioner Diana Lachiondo, meanwhile, tells the Daily Beast that Bundy and his group came to her house late last year when she wasn't there and started "banging on her front door, blowing air horns, shouting about 'tyranny,' and live-streaming the incident on Facebook while her children hid inside."
Mike Satz, executive director of the anti-extremist group The Idaho 97, tells the publication that he's worried about someone who uses such blatant intimidation tactics potentially gaining the power of the state if he somehow wins the governorship.
"This could be dangerous, that such an extreme point of view is trying to mainstream itself," he said. "Normalizing this kind of behavior in our civic engagement is really the most alarming aspect to this."