When Laurie Coleman, wife of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, hauled her trash to the alley at 7:30 Wednesday morning, a chilling sight greeted her.
Sprayed in black on the wooden siding of the garage behind the couple's St. Paul home, in letters nearly a foot high: "U R A CRIMINAL RESIGN OR ELSE! PSALM 2" On the alley side, "SCUM" was scrawled across both garage stall doors and a wooden partition in between.
The Colemans weren't alone. Vandals struck the garages and homes of five other Minnesota members of Congress late Tuesday or early Wednesday, spray-painting graffiti that called for them to resign and included a biblical reference to "Psalm 2."
In Minneapolis, Sen. Amy Klobuchar went to fetch the newspaper and found that the side of her home had been defaced, as did Kim Ellison, the wife of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, also in Minneapolis.
The garages of Rep. Michele Bachmann, of Stillwater; Rep. Jim Ramstad, of Minnetonka, and Rep. John Kline, of Lakeville, also bore similar graffiti.
Klobuchar and Ellison are Democrats; Coleman, Bachmann, Ramstad and Kline are Republicans.
DFL Rep. Betty McCollum, who lives in a St. Paul condominium, did not have her property vandalized -- nor were the homes of representatives in outstate Minnesota.
Peter Panos, spokesman for the St. Paul Police, said the threatening nature of some of the graffiti elevates concerns. "We're looking at this as an actual threat," he said. "We're taking it quite seriously. Vandalism threats are pretty rare in this city."