A Rochester state legislator awoke Saturday to find black spray-painted swastikas, a racial slur and the letters “KKK” spray-painted on her home and lawn signs for her re-election and for Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Vice President Kamala Harris.
DFL Rep. Kim Hicks said home security videos recorded masked vandals spray-painting the graffiti overnight Friday. Besides the signs, she said, the vandals marred a window and her shed.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence it occurred after we put up a Kamala [Harris] sign,” Hicks said Sunday.
She said she’s worried about a pattern of racist graffiti in Rochester, especially after an anti-Black slur was painted on a pedestrian bridge near a city high school earlier this summer.
In a Facebook post, the NAACP Rochester Minnesota Branch called the vandalism a “textbook case” of a hate crime.
“This is yet another incident in a series of many that have targeted Black people, brown people, and mixed race families in [the] City of Rochester, MN and Olmsted County,” the post read.
The NAACP said the vandals should face serious criminal charges.
Hicks, who is running for a second term in the Legislature, said she was not surprised her campaign signs were defaced, but she was shaken by the appearance of a swastika on one of her windows. She said she worried about the effect on her six children.
