well after reaching a record number of females in the state legislature New Jersey is seeing an exodus of women leaving office among them one of the state's first Muslim and Asian Americans to win a seat at the State House Democratic assembly woman Sadaf Jaffer says she won't seek re-election after serving just one term because of verbal attacks from opponents and social media users assemblywoman joffer joins me now assemblywoman thanks so much for talking to me about this by many accounts your star was rising in political circles so I take it the situation had to be pretty bad for you to step back sure yeah I mean I think we experience certain levels of harassment and especially as minorities as women of color as Muslims in politics um and it may be a drip drip drip over time and then also facing re-election and just being being concerned of the types of attacks I might face and the impact that would have on my family especially my young daughter yeah well if you feel comfortable enough would you share what that's been like it's it's been tough it's scary I think that um you know you kind of see the worst of humanity in terms of the Prejudice that people have and you know anyone who's in public service it's it is a sacrifice it's time away from your family it's uh something that you do to serve the public and when you face that sort of targeted harassment based on your race or your religion ethnicity gender um it it really um gets to you were you facing this in the halls of the State House online both um I would say you know my time in the legislature I think was was has been great uh have a good experience with my colleagues um I think it's more the types of attacks that opponents in a campaign might engage in um the last time that I ran for the legislature my opponents you know had a website had a had you know ads and all that still left Jeffers a radical reject extremism um and then beyond that in terms of all sorts of harassment from people on social media saying you know you shouldn't be in this position you're not American you're an infiltrator you're going to do all these horrible things and um and I think you know I've been either running for office or in office since my daughter was two and now she's eight and I feel like it you know before I felt like it was beyond her over her head and when I started thinking about her reacting and as she would sometimes you know why don't people like Mommy why are why are people saying these things um it really started to concern me yeah I mean that's a really difficult thing to explain to anyone let alone an eight-year-old what message uh do you hope this sends by talking about this experience the fact that you are young you were motivated to seek this office to do the public service as you said and now um you're sort of cutting it short by some measures well I think it's you know there's there's so much that individuals can do and then there's other things that we can do as a system as organizations and I can't say that I have all the answers if I did maybe I would have been able to figure it out for myself but I'm very much dedicated to figuring out how to not only get women elected but support them once they're in those positions I think of it in terms of you know not only hiring diverse candidates but also retaining those candidates in these positions and make sure that we have as representative of a government as possible yeah the ugly ugly side of politics Democratic Assembly women sort of joffer thank you so much for your time thank you for having me