Hortman’s seat must be filled in special election before next session starts

A special election to fill slain DFL House leader Melissa Hortman’s seat will be held at some point before February.

Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed early Saturday morning in their Brooklyn Park home. After a massive weekend manhunt, a suspect is being held in lieu of $5 million bond and faces multiple murder and attempted-murder charges.

State law lays out how and when special elections are to be held to fill vacant seats in the Legislature. In this case, Gov. Tim Walz has until the beginning of the next legislative session in February to call the election.

“The governor is the one who makes that call,” said Peter Bartz-Gallagher, spokesman for the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office.

Representatives for Walz did not immediately say when a special election would be held.

The killing of Hortman and her husband, and the attempted killing of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife shocked Minnesotans on Saturday morning.

“I cannot fathom your pain and the grief that you’re going through,” Walz said to the Hortman family at a news conference late Sunday night announcing the capture of the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter.

Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, are recovering after being shot multiple times.

Walz has already called three other special elections in the Legislature this year, including one to fill the seat of former Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, who died in December of cancer.

Voters also filled a House seat in Roseville that was vacated after a judge ruled the DFL candidate lived outside of the district, and a Senate seat in northern Minnesota after the arrest of former Republican Sen. Justin Eichorn.