Melissa Hortman gave a big grin as she milled around in a balcony above the stage at the Fitzgerald Theater, where Gov. Tim Walz had just been sworn in for his second term in January 2023.
The Legislature would kick off its session the next day and Hortman would quickly become a key player in helping Walz and other Democrats pursue an ambitious agenda that had contained many policies long bottled up by divided government.
The gridlock was about to break and Hortman was prepared for that next chapter.
“We are ready to go,” Hortman told MPR News, winding up for what she knew would be a catchy soundbite. “You know, I’m an older person. But younger people teach me the hip, new sayings and I guess there’s a hashtag LFG, which means we are really ready to go and we are really ready to go.”
And off they went, notching one new law after another. In the process, Hortman cemented her spot as one of the most dominant legislative leaders Minnesota has seen.
It’s an assessment shared by political allies and adversaries, and it helps explain the devastation felt by many when they heard the news of her assassination this month in what authorities describe as a politically motivated shooting.
Hortman’s husband, Mark, and dog, Gilbert, were also killed by a gunman who broke into their home. Earlier that night, the shooter also wounded a state senator and his wife and surveilled the homes of other Democratic lawmakers.
Memorial events for the Hortmans are this weekend, beginning with the high honor of having them lie in state Friday in the Capitol Rotunda from noon to 5 p.m. A private funeral is planned for Saturday in Minneapolis.
The Capitol tribute will be the final farewell to a place Hortman, 55, helped define in recent years and that she was professionally defined by.
An early interest in politics
After trying twice to win a Brooklyn Park state House seat, the third time was the charm for Hortman. Along with two dozen other newcomers, Hortman took her oath of office in the House chamber in 2005.
Like thousands of Minnesotans to hold state legislative seats over the years, Hortman came in fresh-faced and relatively unknown. But unlike most, she rose to the rank of House speaker and left a defined mark on state history.
Those who knew her best say politics was a lifelong passion. Her mother, Linda Haluptzok, traces it to childhood.
“When she was 9 years old, she read a book that I was reading, a novel for a book club, and decided she wanted to be the first woman president of the United States,” Haluptzok said. “I kept teasing her lately, especially with Kamala’s candidacy, I said, ‘You better get your butt in gear, girl.’”
Hortman pursued degrees in philosophy and political science at Boston University. And she went on to work for former Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Al Gore in Washington, D.C. It was there she met Mark Hortman, who proposed a few months into a courtship.
“They were paired up together and that was it. I think he knew immediately,’ Mark Hortman’s stepsister Kirah Van Sickle said. “I think he called and told me this was going to be the love of his life.”
Van Sickle vividly recalls when Mark brought Melissa to Raleigh, N.C, to meet his family.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. He’s met his match.’ She was confident and she was funny and it was just obvious they were in love with each other,” she said.
The Hortmans returned to Minnesota. Melissa Hortman received her law degree from the University of Minnesota before she landed at Central Minnesota Legal Services. There, she represented indigent clients in landlord-tenant and housing discrimination cases. She went on to open her own firm.
‘Pioneer’ on clean energy policy
During her early years in the Legislature, she carved out a niche in pressing for solutions to climate change. In 2007, she pushed to require a 30 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks by 2030.
“You have to have a dream. You know Martin Luther King didn’t say, ‘I dream that one day kids will be integrated in schools but workplaces will still be segregated.’ He said, ‘I have a dream that people will be judged by the content of their character,’’ Hortman said at the time. “And so in the same way in global warming, we have to say, ‘What is the gold standard? What are we shooting for?’”
A similar proposal — the Minnesota Next Generation Energy Act — became law later that year. Solar projects are also linked to Hortman’s legislation.
“She saw the future,” said House DFL Floor Leader Jamie Long. “She saw that solar was going to be a form of energy that not only would help tackle climate change, but that would put people to work in Minnesota, that would protect lives by making sure we were taking dirty polluting energy sources offline, and she was a real pioneer in that.”
Former House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher — a colleague and mentor to Hortman — saw potential early on. She designated Hortman to lead debate on a veto override on a bill raising the gas tax to pay for road and bridge repair. That was months after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse.
“She became the person who was our go-to to be the person to yield to, for all questions,” Anderson Kelliher said. “It was a very somber event when we did that and she had the right composure to handle that moment. And I think that moment really defined her for a lot of people in that they saw her leadership come through in that moment.”
‘Sorry. I’m not sorry’
Capitol colleagues also recall Hortman’s efforts to ensure voices of members of her caucus were heard. Hortman became the Democratic minority leader in 2017 and soon after there was a momentous debate. She brought the House to a hush when she admonished fellow lawmakers who were in a lounge off the House floor while women of color in her caucus rose to speak on a bill that would boost penalties for disruptive protest.
"I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room but I think this is an important debate,” Hortman said.
Republicans demanded an apology. But Hortman refused.
“For too long when women are ignored, when people of color are ignored, when women of color are ignored, people don’t say anything. We need to say something,” she said. “We need to call it out when we see it.”
State Sen. Erin Maye Quade was a first-term House lawmaker at the time.
“She was like, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not sorry,’ right?” Maye Quade said. “That was incredible to see. It was really, really incredible to see. Because she wasn’t a flame thrower, she wasn’t bombastic, definitely a truth teller, but she, like, chose her moments to say, ‘I’m actually gonna say what’s going on here. And people might not like it, but it’s worth saying.’”
Kurt Daudt was the Republican House speaker back then. He said the scene was a good representation of what Hortman stood for.
“She just made everybody feel heard, and she made everybody feel like they had a voice at the Capitol. And I hope that’s her legacy. I hope that her legacy is that, you know, she made the Capitol a better place,” Daudt said.
Sure, they clashed politically. But he respected her personally, regarding her as a worthy opponent and a friend.
“She is very quiet, very reserved, very laid back, but yet she will speak up when she needs to, right? She’s empowered and powerful and she would use her voice when she needed to,” Daudt said. “She was also very strategic and very kind of cunning.”
Three terms in the speaker’s seat
After Democrats won House control in 2018, Hortman and Daudt traded places. In her first remarks as speaker, Hortman urged colleagues to come together to work for Minnesotans.
“The campaign is over. It’s time to take off the blue jerseys and the red jerseys, and it’s our job to govern here together as team Minnesota,” Hortman said. “That doesn’t mean that we will govern without conflict. We are not here to avoid conflict. We are here precisely to have conflict. It’s an important part of the democratic process, but if we can have that conflict with good humor and humility we’ll be better off, and Minnesota will be better off.”
She would get that nod twice more. But the last was when she made the biggest mark.
In 2022, voters handed Democrats full legislative control, albeit narrowly. Hortman knew it was a pivotal moment to advance a long DFL wish list. On the eve of the consequential session, she offered the colorful quote to signal DFL lawmakers were ready.
“LFG” became a rallying cry for her party colleagues, who that year wore buttons and T-shirts with those letters and who put up a poster-sized checklist in their caucus room to keep tabs on all they would try to do.
By the end, the poster was full of check marks. They had passed paid family and medical leave benefits, free school meals for students, legal protections for abortion and gender-affirming care, a couple of new gun restrictions and legal recreational cannabis.
“I think that will be her legacy,” Maye Quade said. “Every time a kid learns to read, every time a kid gets food at school, every time we have a great event at a park, every time the trees grow in front of the Capitol, every time you know a service dog graduates or fails to graduate, that will be Melissa.”
The last note is a reference to the Hortmans’ work training service dogs. They adopted their trainee, a golden retriever named Gilbert, after he failed to graduate the program. Hortman’s colleagues said she doted on Gilbert.
“She talked about him all the time,” Long said. “She used to remark that she loved Mark, but Gilbert was her soulmate.”
Navigating a House tie
When voters delivered a tied Minnesota House last year, Hortman and her DFL colleagues committed to protecting those gains.
Hortman gave up the speaker’s gavel to Republican Lisa Demuth in February, after a weekslong standoff between the parties. Members of her caucus said it was a sacrifice.
“She was somebody who had been in that role for us as long as many of us had been in the Legislature. And she didn’t want to over emphasize her personal title. That was not really her style, right?” Long, the House DFL leader, said.
“She was somebody who wasn’t flashy, wasn’t showy and but I think it still was a big sacrifice for her to give up the title, but she did so in order to close the deal and make sure that we got a power-sharing agreement,” he continued.
In exchange, committees were evenly split and Democrats and Republicans traded off chair positions on the panels.
Demuth said Hortman fostered a partnership with her too. She said she appreciated how Hortman included her when she was a minority leader, then as speaker of the tied chamber. She said the pair had a strong working relationship.
“I look at her as a mentor in leadership just from observation. And I think that is really an important thing to recognize that you don’t have to align exactly politically to learn from another leader. And I am grateful for that,” Demuth said.
That teamwork helped usher in a new state budget that required both parties to make compromises.
As Demuth and Hortman worked to finish budget bills last month, Hortman said they were pressuring committee leads to button things up quickly. She flashed her sense of humor in suggesting committees wouldn’t want leaders to step in and put them through a “colonoscopy or proctological exam, something uncomfortable and thorough.”
Hortman was torn up, though, over a measure that would end public health insurance for unauthorized adult immigrants after this year. By signing onto the deal, she agreed to vote for it.
“You know I’ll continue to have health insurance, so I’m fine,” she said while choking back tears that night. “What I worry about is the people who will lose their health insurance and I know that people will be hurt by that vote and we worked very hard to try to get a budget deal that wouldn’t include that provision and we tried any other way we could to come to a budget agreement with Republicans and they wouldn’t have it.”
“So I did what leaders do, I stepped up and I got the job done for the people of Minnesota,” Hortman continued.
All other Democrats in the House opposed it. The Senate also approved it before Gov. Tim Walz made it law.
‘She was in her happy place’
Hortman’s father Harold Haluptzok and her mother Linda said their daughter was in a good place before she passed away.
“I think this spring was probably the first time in her whole political career. She said, ‘You know, I’m where I want to be. I’m happy with my life, my work, my garden, my dog, my children. How much more perfect could my life be?’” Harold Haluptzok said. “And, you know, I hadn’t heard her talk like that as much. You know, it would always be the stress of the job, etc., like all of us. But she was in her happy place.”
When Hortman lies in state Friday — along with Mark and dog Gilbert — it will be the first time a woman lies in state, and the first time two people are accorded the honor in unison.
The Hortmans are survived by a son Colin and a daughter Sophie.
Colin and Sophie Hortman have said people can honor their parents through small acts like baking, planting a tree, telling a dad joke or petting a dog.
“Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect,” they wrote. “The best way to honor our parents’ memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
MPR News reporters Clay Masters, Catharine Richert and Peter Cox, APM Reports’ Kate Martin and MPR Archive Catalogue Manager Michael McBrayer contributed to this report.
