Threats linger over members of Congress as a Trump adversary calls it quits

Anthony Gonzalez, a former Ohio football star with young kids, had a promising future in politics. After voting to impeach Trump, he realized he couldn’t have it all.

...Gonzalez, whose vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump isolated him from all but nine of his House GOP colleagues, announced last week that he will not seek re-election in 2022. His two terms will clock in a year shy of his five-year NFL tenure.

Gonzalez, 37, cited his desire for a “fuller family life” and also the “toxic dynamics inside our own party” as the primary factors in his decision. Those factors intersected profoundly after he voted to hold Trump responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. A former pro athlete accustomed to hometown hero status had to adjust to threats and extra security when passing through Cleveland’s airport with his wife and two young children.

...

Gonzalez, “like me and like a lot of my colleagues ... has very serious security concerns, and both of us have young kids,” Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, a friend of Gonzalez’s who played against him in the NFL, said last week on MSNBC. “These are conversations that they have in other countries, where if you're serving in office, you may have to worry about some kind of political violence descending upon you. That shouldn't be something that happens in the United States.”

...

Gonzalez is the first of the pro-impeachment House Republicans to announce his departure. Others, like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — who lost her caucus leadership post over her vote — show no sign of retreating even as Trump encourages primary challengers.

...

Gonzalez was facing at least two primary challengers in Ohio’s 16th District, including Max Miller, a former Trump White House and campaign aide who jumped into the race after the impeachment vote and quickly scored the former president’s endorsement. Gonzalez remained unapologetic and for months telegraphed no plans to step aside. He had outraised Miller, and some GOP activists in the state thought he had a decent chance of winning.

"I've never thrown in the towel in anything," Gonzalez told NBC News in February. "So I don't know why I'd start."

But Trump and his allies kept the pressure on. In June, Miller opened a Trump rally just outside the district by leading the crowd of thousands in a hostile chant of “Tony’s gotta go!” before charging that “Turncoat Tony betrayed us.” When Trump took the stage, he called Gonzalez “a fake Republican and disgrace to your state.”

Close allies disowned Gonzalez. The Ohio Republican Party censured him and demanded his resignation. Within an hour of his announcement that he wouldn’t seek re-election, the leader of a suburban GOP club who led the censure charge was on Twitter taking victory laps.