On Saturday, Sept. 14, Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, a Republican running for re-election, posted a message on his official Facebook page, cleveland.com’s Lucas Daprile reported. It read, “When people ask me what’s gonna happen when the Flip-Flopping Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo when the Illegal human “Locust” (which she supports!) Need places to live. We’ll already have the addresses of the their [sic] New families who supported their arrival!”
The message was unconstitutional on its face — an elected official threatening to retaliate against citizens for exercising their free-speech rights. In essence, it called on Portage County citizens supporting Zuchowski to create a campaign of harassment and voter intimidation against the sheriff’s political opponents — those supporting Kamala Harris with yard signs that revealed their party preference. And it included a specific threat, that the record of addresses created would be used to target these Harris supporters in future, unpleasant ways.
