SAINT PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota’s 2026 legislative session began by honoring the late Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, her husband, Mark, and their dog, Gilbert.
The Hortmans were shot and killed in their Brooklyn Park home on June 14, 2025. Vance Boelter faces state and federal charges in connection with their deaths.
A joint resolution was read aloud in The House honoring Melissa for her 20-year career in Saint Paul, including as speaker from 2019 to 2025, and for doing so with grace and compassion for Minnesotans and her colleagues regardless of their party.
Governor Tim Walz read a handwritten card Hortman gave him before his first session in 2019 he said he hasn’t shared publicly.
“We need to find win-wins together and the humanity in each other. I look to myself first to do better for the State of Minnesota, to do so in the spirit that Speaker Hortman understood that’s needed to be done, but to see the humanity in one another,” Walz said.
Republican Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth said Hortman’s legacy will outlast any legislative session or political moment. She talked about becoming the House Minority Leader in 2023 and was honored that Hortman began meeting with her weekly which Demuth said other speakers may not have done.
“Melissa’s brand of leadership brought people in instead of shutting them out. She paved the way for a relationship where we never stop listening to each other even when we fundamentally disagreed,” Demuth said.
DFL State Senator John Hoffman of Champlin took part in the remembrance ceremony. He and his wife, Yvette, were shot multiple times the day the Hortmans were killed. He thanked his daughter, Hope, who had a gun pointed at her head for keeping her composure while calling 911. Hoffman also thanked the State Troopers who were by his bedside at the hospital and who escorted him up the capitol steps on the first day of the session.
