Dear John
Most Americans learned about Rep. Scott Perry and his participation in the January 6th insurrection during the January 6th Committee hearing conducted during the summer of 2022. But for those of us in the District, not only were we aware of his ineffectiveness as a Representative, we had already begun experiencing his violent side months earlier.
Starting on November 5th, 2020 when he and Rep. Jim Jordan from Ohio came to our Capitol steps to try to stop the counting of our votes, seeing Scott Perry anywhere near the PA Capitol was never good news.
Once we welcomed 2021, there were rumblings that Scott Perry would be escalating his efforts to help Donad Trump overturn the election. With a little over a month until I was due to deliver my daughter, I was very pregnant when we started to get news that there were bad actors coming into the City.
As an elected official, I had insight into what we were expecting while also reassuring Harrisburg residents that we could manage what was coming. Our City police, State Police and Capitol Police did amazing work making sure that we did. As tensions mounted, my blood pressure had risen to such a point that my doctors asked me to consider inducing labor right away. I asked them to wait for the protests to come to an end before we made the call about whether I was truly developing preeclampsia or whether the stress of keeping my constituents safe was elevating my blood pressure.
Before there was January 6th, there was the January 5th “hear us roar” rally in Harrisburg, a hell for residents and leaders in the District alike. Rioters shootings guns into the air , Confederate flags speeding through residential City streets, and the harassment of service workers were all a part of the show orchestrated by Perry and Jordan as the rioters terrorized PA-10 before continuing south to D.C.for the main event.
On January 6th, dictators around the world would mock American Democracy insisting that we did not in fact have one, or that whatever we did have was in no way more legitimate than what they had. On this January 5th please remember those of us in PA10 who experienced first hand the chaos and violence meted out by unscrupulous and self-serving individuals who claim to be leaders in our community and our country.
