Amid their grief, lawmakers also feared for safety upon learning of shooter’s target list

Tina Smith woke up Saturday to a barrage of text messages.

The U.S. senator spent the evening before catching up with fellow Democratic leaders at the party’s annual fundraising dinner, including longtime DFL legislative leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

By morning, Gov. Tim Walz and other colleagues relayed to her the unthinkable: The Hortmans were dead, and another legislator, state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in the hospital. They had been shot by a man carrying a list of names.

Smith found out later her name was on the list too.

“I think, of course, about my own safety, and I think about the safety of my loved ones as well,” she said. “Of course, it’s scary.”

What law enforcement first described as a “manifesto” penned by Vance Boelter, the man sought in the shootings and arrested by authorities late Sunday night in Sibley County, officials said Sunday is primarily lists of lawmakers and abortion providers. They were found in several locations rather than being discovered in one place.

“This is not a document that would be like a traditional manifesto that’s a treatise on all kinds of ideology and writings,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said at a news briefing, adding that it’s a notebook “with a lot of lawmakers and others ... as opposed to a succinct document.”

“I don’t want the public to have the impression that there’s this long manifesto that’s providing all of this information and details and then associated with names. It’s much more about names.”

Another person familiar with the investigation who saw the list said Hortman’s name was down the list, not at the top. The list was not alphabetized, and some names had addresses, while others did not. It was two pages, containing about 50 to 70 names.

Sources also confirmed Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is on a list, along with members of the DFL congressional delegation and abortion providers. Along with Smith, U.S. Reps. Kelly Morrison and Ilhan Omar are included.

As word of the killings and the list spread, lawmakers texted frantically with each other about which names were included. Law enforcement told many lawmakers on the list directly.

Before Morrison knew anything had happened, a police officer knocked on the door of her suburban home early Saturday. He told her to shelter in place but couldn’t say more.

Not long after, Morrison connected with fellow Democrats in the Minnesota congressional delegation and learned she too had been listed as a possible target on the list.

“This is really a dark and scary moment for our state and for our country and a lot of things,” Morrison said in an interview while she was sheltering with her family.

DFL Rep. Angie Craig had also just seen the Hoffmans and Melissa Hortman at Friday’s dinner and had spoken earlier in the week with Hortman about the end of the legislative session.

She woke up early Saturday to an urgent text message from Rep. Betty McCollum alerting her that there had been a shooting, eventually finding out all three of the people she had seen just hours earlier were victims.

“It is violence and the assassination of, I believe, one of the biggest rising stars in the Democratic Party in Minnesota, but also in our country,” Craig said.

Craig and McCollum declined to say if they were included on the shooter’s list. Even before the shooting, Craig said she’s had to increase her own security measures.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a rise in political threats of violence for some time now,” Craig said. “I don’t do public events anymore without private security or police presence in my own district.” Armed law enforcement paced her driveway as she spoke.

Klobuchar had just arrived in Boston early Saturday en route to political events across Manchester, N.H., and to speak at a dinner for a local Democratic club.

Within hours after she landed, Walz called to tell her of the shooting. She got on the first flight to Minnesota.

“This world we’re in right now, and the divisiveness and anger and what people see online, we just don’t know the facts of what motivated this person,” Klobuchar said in an interview Saturday.

“But, for me, so much of this is, this was an act of targeted political violence. It was an attack on everything we stand for as a democracy, and everyone must condemn it, regardless of if people are Democrats or Republicans.”

At a news briefing, Evans wouldn’t go into specifics about the “manifesto.” He said the document “gives some indications” as to the shooter’s motivations, but it’s too early to say with certainty how targets were chosen.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Sunday that his name was among those Boelter allegedly targeted in a series of lists. He said he’d only seen a partial list, “the one with the political folks on it.”

Of Rep. Hortman, he added: “Melissa was a dear, dear friend. I knew her very well and I admired her tremendously.”