Minnesota Speaker Melissa Hortman’s Family and Friends on Her Life and Death

L
et me tell you about Melissa Hortman.

It’s the early 2000s. She and her husband, Mark, tell their kids they are driving from their Minneapolis home to Michigan on a camping trip. Sophie and Colin are stoked.

Then Mom takes a detour. The Hortman family’s 150,000-miles-plus minivan finds itself at the gates of a Michigan recycling plant. You see, Michigan has a 10-cent bottle-return law that Hortman thinks might work for Minnesota.

“This will be fun,” Hortman tells her kids.

They stay for three hours.

Let me tell you about Melissa Hortman.

Her favorite book is The Little Prince, the story of a pilot who befriends a six-year-old prince from a faraway asteroid. There’s a line in the book where a magical fox tells the little prince the secret to life:

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Let me tell you about Melissa Hortman. It is the summer of 2024. Hortman is now the speaker of the Minnesota House. She has just been instrumental in passing the Minnesota Miracle, a “holy shit” 30-point piece of legislation that protects and offers a hand up to the state’s neediest citizens. Now, she is at a retreat along with the other members of her Democratic Farmer Labor caucus. There is much to celebrate, perhaps too much. A legislator knocks back one too many of Hortman’s Patron Silver margaritas. The next morning, he is, let us say, unwell. She knocks on his hotel door and leaves him some Advil.

“You just stay here as long as you need,” says Hortman before closing the door.

Let me tell you about Melissa Hortman. She encourages others, but she is not going to the June No Kings rally: “Not a protesty girl.” That’s true; she is a policy nerd.

She owns every issue of Chocolatier Magazine. Hortman issues her two kids credit cards when they leave for college, to be used only in emergencies and for chocolate. On television, she loves The Great British Bake Off, nothing too deep. There’s already enough anger and sorrow in the actual world.

Let me tell you about Melissa Hortman. She arrives at caucus meetings, her blond hair still wet, and, well, always a little late. Under her arm is a policy binder and an oversize purse. Hortman gains solace from her Catholic faith, something she doesn’t talk about very much but has embraced since her days as a Sunday-school helper at the Church of Saint Timothy in her hometown of Blaine. Deep in the recesses of said purse is a bent and folded copy of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope.

Let me tell you one last thing about Melissa Hortman. Sometimes, she feels — no, she knows — politics is pushing her away from St. Francis’ words.

She hates it.

How It Ends

In the early hours of June 14, 2025, Melissa Hortman, her husband, Mark, and their dog, Gilbert, are murdered in their Brooklyn Park home. The killer is dressed as a cop and carries a death list of Minnesota Democratic lawmakers. (State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife are also shot. They both recover.)

The Hortmans lie in state a week later in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda, along with Gilbert. On June 28, a funeral mass is held at Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and thousands of Minnesotans mourn together. Gov. Tim Walz gives a eulogy; so does Melissa’s best friend, Robin Ann Williams. They weep for all she accomplished, and they weep for what could have been: Colin’s December wedding, more Sophie brunches, and, maybe, becoming Minnesota’s next governor.

Political violence haunts our history, a black car idling outside a diner while folks talk to reporters about American exceptionalism over bacon and eggs. It is a patient virus, waiting for chaos and confusion, and then finding a new victim. It metastasizes slowly and then explodes. Lincoln and his cabinet after Appomattox. A century later, JFK, RFK, and MLK fall, creating so much terror that everyone understands what Mick Jagger is singing about:

I shouted out, “Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all, it was you and me.

Here we are again. Hortman’s murder was preceded by two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, a botched murder plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the fire-bombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home. It is followed by the Charlie Kirk assassination three months later.

The murder of innocents has always been a historical fact, whether committed by Sudanese warlords or American drones. These days, we doomscroll to the next atrocity, our outrage for the anonymous dead anesthetized like an alcoholic who feels nothing after downing a pint of gin.

The pain only lingers when it is someone we know or someone we think we know from TV or Instagram. I can tell you that Melissa Hortman would be pissed off if her murder meant more to you than, say, the killing of a homeless vet in downtown Minneapolis. But the dead don’t get to make that call. The June massacre of 10 students by a suicidal gunman packing a Glock and a sawed-off shotgun in Graz, Austria, did not crush me. No, it was the murder of Melissa Hortman — a woman I met once — that dropped me to the carpet in my Los Angeles hotel room.

This is not a true-crime story. I am sure there is a podcast in the works, if that’s your thing. And this is not a story about Utah Sen. Mike Lee posting tweets after Melissa Hortman’s murder reading, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” and another one quipping, “Nightmare on Waltz street.” And this is not a story about late-night Fox News Gollum Greg Gutfeld suggesting Hortman knew her killer. (She did not.) And it is definitely not about Trump professing not to know who she was two months after her death and then insisting he would have flown flags at half-staff for Hortman if only Walz wasn’t such a jerk.

None of that is important. Williams, Hortman’s best friend, tells me she doesn’t even know the name of Melissa and Mark Hortman’s killer. “It does not matter how Melissa died,” Williams says in a whisper. “All that really matters is how she lived.”

This is what I know. It is October 2024, and I am in Minneapolis covering Walz’s vice presidential campaign. One of Walz’s calling cards is 2023’s Minnesota Miracle, a dizzying array of social safety-net legislation that he and the state legislature passed. His staffers urge me to talk with someone named Melissa Hortman, who they claim is the true architect of the policies.

I drive to a St. Paul coffee shop near the state Capitol. I am having a bad day; I have fucked up my neck and shoulder, but with the tumult of the presidential campaign, I’ve not made it to a doctor. I am in excruciating pain and even more addled than usual as I slide into a chair across from her. She senses something is amiss and gives me some grace.

“Take your time, get settled, I’m not going anywhere.”

This may seem like nothing, but I’ve been doing this a while. It is definitely something.

She then speaks frankly about Walz and how they share a belief in spending political capital, not hoarding it, and the George Floyd protests, to a degree that her press aide’s eyebrows shoot up like a surprised cartoon character. Later, I learn this is classic Hortman. We say goodbye and share misplaced optimism about Election Day, a week away.

Political violence is a patient virus, waiting for chaos, then finding a new victim.

This story is written in the present tense. Why? Not one of the dozens of family, friends, and colleagues I interviewed can bear to refer to Hortman in the past tense. Maybe it is a coping mechanism, or maybe it is a belief that her achievements are a living, breathing thing.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

So, let me tell you a little more about Melissa Hortman.

How It Begins

A brother and sister scramble through John’s Auto Parts in Blaine, Minnesota. They open the doors of Novas and Pontiacs before they are pulverized, looking for change or other treasures. The older boy is Patrick, an incorrigible lad who sometimes arrives home with only one shoe, is allergic to most foods, and will right himself in time to graduate from MIT at the age of 20. Right behind him is his sensible sister. She is born Melissa but goes by Missy because she has a speech impediment and can’t get all the letters out.

Somewhere on the lot are their parents, Harold and Linda Haluptzok. They met at Der Lach Haus, Linda’s dad Muzzy’s supper club. Harold was the head busboy, and Linda worked coat check. They fell in love in high school and had their kids in 1969 and 1970 while they both were students at the University of Minnesota. Sixty years later, they are still holding hands. “When I dream, I still dream about her, not other women, which is nice,” says Harold of his wife.

This is not your regular boneyard. Early in the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency sends Harold a notice with a heavy fine, claiming oil and tire residue has soaked into the ground and their property is going to become one of the agency’s first cleanup sites. The notice turns the Haluptzoks into accidental environmentalists. They negotiate an extension and clean up their property.

Both Linda and Harold self-identify as type A personalities, so it doesn’t stop there. He writes a book on how to run an environmentally safe junkyard. Eventually, the couple own five salvage yards and travel around the world giving speeches on how to crush cars and remain on speaking terms with Mother Earth.

Missy notices it all and has questions.

“How do you keep the oil safe? How does a business work? What is global warming?”

Her parents try explaining, but mostly they just let her watch. At 10, she is obsessed with the 1980 presidential election. She tells her mom something very important: “I am going to be the first female president.”

Melissa wants to go to Harvard. “Kids from Blaine don’t go to Harvard,” explains her counselor. She applies anyway. She doesn’t get in. She goes to Boston University. Four years later, she graduates with honors and applies to Harvard Law School. No dice. Instead, she returns home and goes to the University of Minnesota Law School. Decades later, she applies to the Harvard Graduate School of Public Policy. She gets in and earns her master’s.

Melissa Haluptzok is a persistent woman. And Mark Hortman is a persistent man. It is the summer of 1992. Melissa is working in Sen. John Kerry’s office. She goes to the D.C. office of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program and fills out an application to mentor a kid in need. A young man watches her. He times turning in his own application to coincide with hers.

Mark is from North Carolina, his Southern roots stretching back for more than a century. Still, he makes it clear to Melissa on one of their first dates that he does not fear the cold. He visits the Haluptzoks during an October blizzard and traipses around the frozen tundra in just a light jacket.

Mark says no to his parents’ offer to set him up in the family’s thriving printing business. He and Melissa are engaged three months after they start dating. They marry and settle in Brooklyn Park, about 15 minutes from where she grew up. They seem mismatched, but it works. Early in their marriage, at a Democratic Farm Labor district caucus meeting, Mark argues for the legalization of marijuana. (The DFL is the Minnesota version of the Democratic Party.) Melissa smiles, then stands up and argues against it.

Mark works in the tech world, and on the side invents a robot to make his morning oats and, years later, a weeding robot that can tell the difference between weeds and flowers. He builds his own speakers and talks about how much he loves the band Soul Coughing. Melissa rolls her eyes, dreams of policy conferences and being asleep by 8:30.

The couple have Colin and Sophie quickly, just like Harold and Linda had Missy and Patrick. Melissa works for Central Minnesota Legal Services as a housing lawyer and represents Stormy Harmon, a mother of three left homeless after her landlord refused to fix her furnace. Hortman proves the landlord has a persistent pattern of making racist threats and harassing Harmon’s children. Despite the landlord maintaining his innocence, Hortman wins Harmon the largest jury award for a single family’s race-based housing-discrimination claim in state history to date.

Enough already, that’s what Melissa Hortman would say at this point: “Why do we gotta do all this tomfoolery, this turkey dance? Why am I doing all this bullshit? Let’s just do the thing right now.”

OK, let’s do the thing.

‘She Sees Us’

It doesn’t come easy. Hortman runs for state representative but loses in both 1998 and 2002. Part of it is demographics — her Brooklyn Park district is traditional suburban GOP — and part of it is Hortman’s honesty. She knocks on hundreds of doors, and when a mom says she is against something, say, gay marriage, Hortman doesn’t dance around it, she locks eyes and tells the mom gay marriage is simply about equality for everyone. In 2004, she squeezes past the incumbent by 400 votes.

The universal rule for freshmen reps is sit down, shut up, and let seniority get things done. Hortman doesn’t really abide by that. In her first term, Minnesota is bogged down in a budget deadlock. Hortman and a group of ad hoc legislators from both parties meet and brainstorm ideas that they pass on to House leaders. The ideas help break the logjam, and the budget passes.

At 10, she tells her mom something very important: “I am going to be the first female president.”

Hortman also spends her early years being her father’s daughter, contemplating how to make environmental reforms that also make good business sense, while making friends with colleagues. She is elected assistant majority leader in her second term. In 2013, Hortman becomes chair of the House Energy Policy Committee. Fortuitously, the Minnesota DFL has a rare trifecta that year, control of both legislative bodies and the governor’s mansion. She sees her chance and grinds down her caucus with facts and figures about how Minnesota going solar — even in a small way — is financially smart and environmentally friendly. In the end, she pushes through a bill that provides tax breaks to businesses using solar energy and mandates that Minnesota utilities obtain 1.5 percent of their electricity from solar by 2020.

How proud is she? Go look up her X bio. It cites only one achievement: Author of MN’s solar standard and community solar law.

Two years later, she attends the Paris Climate Conference. She smiles as international legislators ask her in multiple languages how they can craft a similar bill. Party leaders approach her about running for Congress. She talks to Mark and the kids about it. They tell her to go for it. But then she walks through the house and sees the photos on the fridge and the kids’ gym bags ready for their next swim meet. She loves sitting in the stands and serving as the team’s timer. And then she thinks of Minnesota winters and imagines getting stuck in Washington, D.C., because a snowbound Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is closed. She says thanks but no thanks.

She keeps moving up the ladder in the House. By 2017, Hortman is minority leader. That April, there’s a debate in the House on a bill that would increase the criminal penalties for civil protests that block roads and highways. Minnesota is 20 percent minority, but there are 16 representatives of color at the time. Many speak against the bill. Rena Moran speaks of how her great-great grandmother was a slave and how her family’s progress can be marked by their freedom to protest injustice.

Hortman listens and gets angry. Few representatives are in their seats. Many of them are in the House lounge playing poker.

“I hate to break up the 100 percent white-male card game, but I think this is an important debate,” Hortman says.

One of those hearing her remarks is Rep. Moran. “She sees us, she hears us,” thinks Moran.

Hortman’s remarks incense Minnesota House Republicans.

“Minority Leader, would you apologize to the body?”

She will not.

“I have no intention of apologizing,” says Hortman. “I am so tired of watching Rep. Susan Allen give an amazing speech, Rep. Peggy Flanagan give an amazing speech, watching Rep. Jamie Becker Finn give an amazing speech, Rep. Rena Moran give the most heartfelt, incredible speech I’ve heard on this House floor as long as I can remember, watching Rep. Ilhan Omar give an amazing speech, and looking around, to see, ‘Where are my colleagues?’ … And I’m really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So, I’m not sorry.”

The 2018 election is just around the corner, and Hortman knows that calling bullshit on the Republicans is not enough. It didn’t work in 2016 when she expected a state House majority and a female president.

“We said to ourselves, ‘The electorate is not buying what we’re selling,’” Hortman tells me last year. “So, we need to go talk to the electorate, to people who are not involved and not activists, to get the real feel.”

Hortman and other DFL leaders launch a listening tour called the Minnesota Values Plan. “They want really great public schools,” Hortman tells me. “They want health care that’s more affordable and accessible, so they get it when they need it. They want an economy that works for everyone.”

Leaving nothing to chance, Hortman recruits candidates and stresses that ads and yard signs do not matter, you must go door to door. It becomes her obsession, and she personally door-knocks in every contested district.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz is running for governor under a premise similar to Minnesota Values, called One Minnesota. Walz wins and the DFL takes the House. Hortman beams when she is handed the speaker’s gavel.

Hortman and Walz are simpatico, but she makes it clear to the governor her House is not to be trifled with. Strike that, Hortman has a creatively profane streak. She basically says, “Don’t fuck with us.”

Here’s an example. During a testy policy debate, an angry Walz tells the press corps that the House is acting like spoiled children. Within minutes, Hortman gets Walz on the phone and he receives a slap-down.

“You need to be specific who you are talking about, not group us all together,” Hortman tells Waltz.

“Ms. Speaker, I apologize. I should have been more specific,” Walz says.

Walz issues a public apology the same day.

“There was a simmering rage that did not stop,” Hortman Said after the 2022 election.

On May 25, 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, kills George Floyd, a Black man, by placing him in a chokehold and slamming his knee onto his windpipe. Floyd gasps and calls for his mother before he suffocates to death.

The city erupts into fiery protests with stores burned out and police stations set afire. During the worst nights, Hortman and her deputies maintain a phone line where reps can report violence in their districts, and she routes the calls directly to the state emergency-operations center. At her urging, the governor calls a special session of the legislature to deal with police reform.

One of Hortman’s first calls is to Moran. She knows that as one of the few members of color in the House it is essential that Moran lead the efforts to pass a police-reform bill that will have the greatest impact in inner-city districts like the one Moran represents. Moran has her doubts.

“That is not what I do, I’m not even on the public-safety committee,” Moran says.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hortman says. “You’re going to do it.”

And Moran does it. In July, the House passes a police-reform law that somehow passes the Republican-controlled Senate and is signed into law by Walz. The bill prohibits chokeholds like the one that killed Floyd and creates an independent body to investigate police officers accused of sexual assault or killing a civilian. The bill also prohibits police departments from offering overly aggressive “warrior-style training.” Walz lavishes Hortman with praise for keeping the bill moving forward, but Hortman redirects the adulation to Moran.

“She really has the skill to see what you are capable of doing, even when you didn’t think you could do it,” Moran says. “I will never forget that.”

The Caucus Mom

Melissa Hortman doesn’t mind when other legislators call her the caucus mom. It’s true. She’s a suburban mother in an electric car who arrives home, kicks off her sensible shoes, and puts on her cozy slippers. She takes fashion tips from her hip daughter, Sophie. And, yeah, she is so coffee-addicted that she moves the coffee maker into the marital bathroom. And sure, sometimes reps beg for 15 minutes of her time and she seems somewhere else, worrying about her kids. She’s a mom, and she will not apologize.

That normalcy makes the fact that in 2023 Minnesota House Speaker Hortman passes the most sweeping social legislation in Minnesota history — think of a Gopher State New Deal — all the more remarkable.

Go to the state House and see it for yourself. Hortman’s greatest achievement hangs on the wall in the Minnesota State Capitol Building. “Top Bills for 2023 Session” read two poster boards, each with 15 policy goals, 30 in total. All 30 have check marks indicating “passed” and “enacted.”

It all starts with the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Minnesota borders North Dakota and South Dakota in the west, ardently red states that quickly move to make abortion a felony. Suddenly, Minnesota is on the frontier of the pro-choice movement.

“There was a simmering rage that did not stop,” Hortman tells the press after the 2022 election.

Women voters turn out, and the DFL retains the House and the governor’s mansion. Early that morning, it becomes clear they would also have a majority in the state Senate, a rare trifecta in the purplish state. At that moment, Hortman remembers a political cartoon that stuck with her.

“It was around the time that Barack Obama got elected and had a federal trifecta,” Hortman tells me over our coffee. “There was a political cartoon of a donkey cowering behind the light coming through a doorway, and it said, ‘Don’t just stand there. Do something.’”

That’s not going to be Hortman.

“Let’s fucking go,” she tells her caucus.

Free hot lunch for all Minnesota students is a priority for Walz, and she knows if they wait until May or June of 2023, when the budget is usually passed, it will delay the lunches for another school year. So, she pushes a stand-alone bill in February, and the hot lunches are served the following September. Then she gets to work on the rest. A few legislators ask if they can vote no on tough ones involving granting undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses and access to the state public-health system. She talks them out of it. She tells them their opponents will attack them either way. Why not do the right thing?

The 30-point policy passes through the House and Senate without a dissenting DFL vote. I ask her what kind of feedback the legislation was receiving on the campaign trail just 10 days before the 2024 election.

“People don’t elect us to go to the Capitol and twiddle our fingers,” Hortman tells me. She has a Cheshire cat’s smile and wise eyes. “What we heard from the electorate in 2022 is they were very happy and that, ‘Oh, finally, my government did something!’”

I prod a bit about whether the changes might seem too drastic for a nearly 50-50 state like Minnesota. She shakes her head no.

“Ask the average person in Minnesota, ‘Do you want to be able to take time off if you get cancer and still have a job?’ Or ask the average Minnesotan, ‘If a family has a child who is transgender, should they be able to get the health care that they feel that they need for their child? ”

Hortman thrusts her hands, palms upward.

“It’s basic human decency.”

Her Sanctuary

Let’s talk about Hortman’s real house. Her home is everything. This is where she and Mark raise their kids. It has everything she needs and is only 30 minutes from her mom and dad and their pool in summertime.

Here at 8710 Windsor Terrace — the address is prominently listed on her campaign website — it all starts with the kitchen. There’s Mark making breakfast for Sophie every morning her senior year because he knows his dad days are running short and worries she might be lonely now that Colin is away at college.

There’s Melissa baking cakes and mixing margaritas. And there’s the deck with the grill overlooking the Edinburgh Golf Course where the Hortmans hang with their best friends Robin and her husband, Paul Filiatrault, drinking cocktails and talking about Mark’s progress on building a weeding robot for Melissa, one that could discern between dandelions and his wife’s beloved delphiniums.

Melissa’s garden is her favorite place. She spends hours there in a sun hat, pruning and watering with AirPods in as she burns through calls to her more long-winded caucus members. On Saturdays, she calls Sophie and asks her to meet her at Bachman’s Garden Center. Sophie grumpily texts back: “Mom, I’m still sleeping. Let’s meet for brunch later.”

Undeterred, Melissa goes it alone, picking out orchids because they attract butterflies, and she loves butterflies. Back in the garden, she calls state Rep. Brad Tabke, a landscaper by trade, to see if she is planting her lilacs correctly.

Hortman’s home is her sanctuary even in the winter. That’s when she cross-country skis the golf course, only growling when she notices an inconsiderate snowshoer has fucked up the trail.

Then, the sanctuary seems less secure. After George Floyd’s death, protesters march outside the governor’s mansion, and they march in front of 8710 Windsor Terrace. This is one of the few things in life that freaks out the legendarily unflappable Hortman.

Colleagues tell her it will be fine; the protesters just want to be heard. Then Jan. 6 happens. Protesters try to break into the governor’s mansion. Other Minnesota legislators have protesters outside their homes, walking the streets with rifles, taking advantage of the state’s open-carry laws.

“People don’t elect us to go to the capitol and twiddle our fingers,” Hortman tells me.

Hortman is alone. Her kids are grown and out of the house, and Mark is down in Naples, Florida, where his father has just had triple-bypass surgery. She gets a call from the Minnesota State Police that there has been a credible threat against her safety, and it would be best if she could leave the metropolitan area for a few days. So, Hortman calls Colin and the two drive 200 miles north into Minnesota’s Iron Range. They check into a lodge and the two have a great time, Colin snowboarding and his mom doing her cross-country thing. Mother and son head back home after a few days, the threat having dissipated.

But Hortman is still scared. She calls state Rep. Ryan Winkler, her top deputy, and tells him she’s done.

“I can’t do this. I think I need to quit. I need to walk away.”

He tries to calm her.

“Melissa, you’re going to go check into a hotel. Get away from your house. Go someplace where nobody knows where you are.”

She takes his advice and checks into a hotel. But it’s not enough. A few days later, Hortman is on a conference call with her family. She makes an announcement: “I’m getting a dog.”

The family loves dogs, but there is momentary silence as everyone tries to broach how she is going to manage a dog with her legislative schedule.

“I need some work-life balance. Besides, I can get out of things early. I can just say I’ve got to go home and walk my dog.”

Hortman calls Helping Paws foster home, where she once volunteered, and asks if they have a dog that needs a home. The next day, she meets Gilbert, a golden retriever who is a service dog in training. For years, Hortman has written her thoughts down in a journal, volumes filling a shelf in her closet. The subjects range from the kids to Mark to legislators on her “bad list.” Now, it’s all about her new friend.

3:36 a.m. Gilbert needed to potty
4:00 a.m. Cuddled with Gilbert
4:05 a.m. Try to get him back to sleep

Winkler and other friends see the dark cloud over Hortman pass. Alas, Gilbert proves too irascible and silly to be a service dog.

“I wouldn’t mind if I ended up being Gilbert’s human,” she tells friends.

She gets her wish. Gilbert flunks out of the service-dog academy.

All she has to do now is keep Gilbert out of her garden.

‘Our Beloved Melissa’

Melissa Hortman wakes up to a different world on Nov. 6, 2024. There’s the disappointment of the Harris-Walz defeat and Hortman’s hold on the speakership is tenuous. The Minnesota State House is deadlocked at 67-67. The Republicans play hardball, suggesting they will unilaterally refuse to seat Hortman’s friend Brad Tabke, because his race is close. This will give them a one-seat majority. Hortman offers them compromises, but when the GOP won’t negotiate in good faith, she holds out her caucus, preventing the Republicans from having a quorum. The deadlock lasts three weeks. Hortman knows that to break the impasse, she must part with her greatest achievement. She offers the Republicans her speaker gavel if they will certify the election of the contested seat and consent to equal committee assignments.

Her caucus begs her not to do it.

“She wanted to do it from the beginning,” says Zack Stephenson, the House Democratic majority leader. “She didn’t want her hanging onto the speakership to be the thing that held us up. It took the rest of us a bit of time to get over being mad about it, but she knows what needs to be done.”

Hortman knows the move will protect her committee chairs and staffers’ jobs, and that will help them save most of the policies they passed in 2023, including paid family and medical leave, abortion rights, affordable-housing investments, and millions for Minnesota’s underfunded public schools.

She also knows a budget must be passed by June 15 or the state government shuts down. Hortman tells about a government-worker acquaintance caught in a different shutdown, who took his own life, despairing about his bills. She isn’t going to let that happen again.

Hortman thinks she can protect everyone. This time she is wrong. The Trumpian rage against the undocumented is in full throat. Trump is unleashing Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the country, rounding up undocumented immigrants, often without the semblance of due process. Minnesota Republicans are doing their part and insisting that Minnesota stop providing health insurance to undocumented immigrants.

Hortman offers them anything else — tax relief, budget cuts — but they will not back down. She scratches and claws and appeals to the Republicans’ humanity, and they agree not to kick kids under 18 off the insurance.

“It is only because of Melissa that the kids still have coverage,” Walz tells me.

But Hortman knows that roughly 20,000 Minnesotans will suffer and some of them will die. Hortman meets with Walz and Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy. Walz cries. Murphy cries. And Hortman cries.

“I hate this,” Hortman tells a friend. “This is not me, this is not why I am here.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d run,” Gov. Walz tells Hortman about his seat. She is flattered but unsure.

Standing before an ornate fireplace in the governor’s office, Walz, Hortman, and legislators from both parties announce they have reached a budget deal, avoiding a governmental shutdown. Walz admits that part of the compromise was ending insurance coverage for undocumented immigrants older than 18. Progressive members of Hortman’s caucus are pissed. They bang on the conference room’s heavy doors, interrupting Walz’s remarks.

Hortman does not blame them. She and Murphy, a nurse for 40 years, know it is all bullshit, red-meat optics, because the same undocumented are now going to show up in ERs, desperate with life-threatening and expensive problems that could have been stopped with preventive care.

Hortman carries the weight alone. She insists that stripping undocumented immigrants of health care will be a stand-alone vote. She is the only Democrat to vote for the cut. She presses the green button at her legislative desk and votes yes. A little later, she talks about the vote with the Capitol press corps. Exhausted, in a dark-green business suit, Hortman cries again.

“I did what leaders do. I stepped up and I got the job done for the people of Minnesota.”

Hortman retreats to her office and sits at her desk, where Romans 14:19 is in a small frame.

So, let’s strive for the things that bring peace and the things that build each other up.

She fidgets and texts Senate Majority Leader McCarthy, who is still working out the in and outs of her side of the bill.

“What’s taking so long? I want to go home.”

Someone remembers that Melissa hasn’t eaten all day and places a food order for her. A friend texts later and asks how she is doing. She texts back.

“I’m fine, eating now! Worried about my soul but real happy about this Panera order.”

It is her last vote.

The Heir Apparent

Two days later, Melissa Hortman drives to meet Sophie for brunch at Fat Nat’s, their usual spot. She sits down and tries to give her daughter some tough love.

“You’ve overdrawn one of your accounts.”

She then offers something between a grimace and a smile.

“I’d be madder,” she says, “but I just noticed I’m overdrawn on my account, too.”

They laugh, and Mom confides to her daughter that she is thinking of getting out of politics.

“Maybe I could study and become a horticulturalist. Or just pull weeds.”

Sophie listens and gives an understanding nod. She has heard this before at the end of a legislative session. They change the subject and talk of other things, Sophie’s dating, upcoming pool days at Harold and Linda’s, Colin’s wedding, and Dad’s robot weeder.

They linger after the meal, but then it’s time to go. They speak in unison.

“I love you.”

That Friday evening, Melissa and Mark head to the DFL’s annual Humphrey-Mondale dinner with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker giving the keynote address. She wears a business suit while Mark wears a paisley shirt and a maroon sports jacket. She finds these dinners a grind under the best of circumstances, but she is still fried from the session.

Onstage, Walz gives her a shout-out.

“I’ve had the pleasure of signing Melissa Hortman’s legislation for six years,” Walz says.

Everyone claps.

Walz and Hortman have been talking throughout the session about something other than pending bills. Walz is coming to the end of his second term and confides to Hortman he’s thinking of not running again in 2026. “I was kind of hoping you’d run,” Walz tells her.

Hortman is flattered, but unsure. She is hellbent on taking back the legislature in 2026. There is already talk of new candidates and, yes, intense door-knocking. Besides, Hortman wonders, maybe she already is in the perfect spot, a place where she can make a difference without all of the, well, bullshit that goes with being governor. But now she just needs to sleep. It’s cloudy that night in Minneapolis. It doesn’t matter. Hortman knows tomorrow will be a good day to spend in her garden.

Summer is here.

What Was Lost

The summer is fading by the time I fly to Minneapolis. It fights back occasionally with a day of brilliant sunshine bouncing off Lake Minnetonka, and then concedes to reality, and the rain falls sideways. It is not unlike the grief enveloping Melissa Hortman’s loved ones.

“I am in an OK place now,” Sophie Hortman tells me one afternoon at the Sociable Cider Werks in Minneapolis.

She’s a teacher but is taking a year off. She smiles as ABBA’s “Knowing You, Knowing Me” plays. Her mom loves ABBA. She talks with her brother, Colin, every day. Colin works in information technology and is soft-spoken, and with his beard resembles the Southern gentlemen from his dad’s side of the family.

Recently, Sophie and Colin took Colin’s old boat out and just floated around on Lake Minnewaska. They talked of their mom’s love of butterflies. Then, magically, butterflies were flitting around the boat. They whispered to each other.

“She’s here.”

Sophie smiles at the memory and then talks about how she and her mom would trade stories about wrangling humans, Hortman in the House, Sophie with her students.

“I know I have been deeply damaged by this,” Gov. Walz says of Hortman’s death. “We all have.”

“I can laugh and think of my mom and dad in a good way,” Sophie says. “But I know I can still go back to a bad place.”

I catch Harold and Linda Haluptzok on a good day, if you can call it that.

The Haluptzoks drink coffee at a quiet table at the Midland Hills Country Club. I ask them if they can share any stories of their daughter’s foibles as a kid.

“She was perfect,” says Linda with a smile. She reaches for Harold’s hand. “She was a perfect baby.”

Others are haunted by past conversations. I talk with former state Rep. Ryan Winkler, Hortman’s friend and colleague. We meet at the Trailhead, a complex built at the base of hiking and cross-country skiing trails in Golden Valley. Winkler is handsome and an inveterate charmer, talking about how his admittedly bombastic approach to legislation sometimes collided with Hortman’s no-bullshit approach.

“You’re just working against yourself,” Hortman would tell Winkler.

We’re about to leave when he asks if he can tell me one more thing. Winkler’s eyes well up, and he can’t get the words quite right.

“The fact that the thing that she was afraid of would happen, and it happens in a way that is even worse than she feared. It wasn’t just her, right? It was Mark, it was Gilbert.”

Tears roll down his face.

“It’s like this guy somehow in his demented, deluded brain, he somehow managed to reach out and stab where we were weakest, where she was weakest.”

Back at the Capitol, there remains a table of remembrance to “Our Beloved Melissa” outside the House chambers. Her name is still listed alphabetically on the wall with the other representatives.

A floor above, Gov. Tim Walz looks much older than when I talked with him a year ago on the top floor of a church in Savannah, Georgia, where the windows were blacked out with campaign posters so that a sniper would not have a clear shot. Now, he sits in his office with a single aide and makes small talk about meeting Neil Young last weekend at Farm Aid. But his smile quickly fades. Walz spent the summer in torment, thinking of his conversations with Hortman and how she should be Minnesota’s next governor.

“I think she was thinking about it,” Walz says. He sighs and rubs his eyes. Melissa’s death left him grappling with whether to retire or run again.

“I know I have been deeply damaged by this,” Walz says in a quiet voice. “We all have.”

In the end, Walz decides to run again.

On my last day in Minnesota, I drive north to Brooklyn Park and the house at 8710 Windsor Terrace. I’d avoided visiting the house for two weeks, reasoning this story was about Hortman’s life, not how it ended. But it’s time to confront the damage done.

Blocks away, I start to see “Thank You Melissa” signs in the yards of the comfortable three-car-garage homes. The sun shines brightly. Then I come to the Hortmans’ home.

The windows have been boarded up with plywood in the front and the back to protect against vandals. The front lawn, while carefully mowed, is brown and lifeless. A grill sits on the deck facing the golf course and conjures up a lonely John Cheever short story. What once was the warmest of homes is now an overrun fortress from a meaningless war.

And then there’s the garden. It’s almost October, so Hortman’s beloved flowers — the delphiniums, the orchids — are gone. The dandelions — the ones Mark swore his gardening robot would destroy — have taken over, along with some wilted black-eyed Susans. It is unbearably sad.

But let me tell you one last thing about Melissa Hortman.

She wouldn’t have stood there, helpless, and moony-eyed. No, she would have asked a single question.

“Are you gonna stand there and moan, or are you going to help me pull these damn weeds?

“Let’s fucking go.”

Senior writer STEPHEN RODRICK spent time with Melissa Hortman and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz while covering the 2024 presidential campaign.