Melissa and Mark Hortman remembered for humanity, public service as they are laid to rest

Minnesotans said goodbye to Melissa and Mark Hortman on Saturday with a grand tribute honoring the slain DFL leader’s legacy as one of the most impactful legislators in state history, but also the couple’s humanity as beloved parents and community members.

More than 1,300 mourners — including former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and a near-complete roster of Minnesota’s political class — gathered for the funeral Mass beneath the towering ceilings of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

They remembered Melissa as a selfless public servant and faithful Catholic who would have eschewed such a spotlight.

“Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history — and I’ll always remember her as a close friend, a mentor, and the most talented legislator I’ve ever known,” said Gov. Tim Walz, one of two people who gave a eulogy at the funeral.

Honored alongside her in death was Mark, her most enthusiastic supporter from her first two failed campaigns through her rise to becoming the third female speaker of the Minnesota House.

The untimely loss of the Hortmans, who were shot and killed in their home earlier this month, shook the nation’s political core and left an indelible void in Minnesota. But their legacy lived on Saturday inside the basilica as people celebrated their contributions to the state and remembered their love of billiards, baking, sitting on their porch and having friends over for dinner.

“It’s easy sometimes to forget that, for all its significance, politics is made up of people. That’s all it is. Just a bunch of human beings doing their best,” Walz said.

The basilica was filled with lush bouquets and greenery, a nod to Melissa’s love for gardening. Lawmakers past and present, GOP and DFL, filed into the church in the morning drizzle and fastened buttons, decorated with plants and trees, to their shirts. At home, Walz said Melissa “fussed over her lilies like they were wayward members of the caucus.”

In her career, Melissa Hortman ascended from humble blue-collar beginnings to one of the highest-ranking positions in Minnesota government. Her love for politics started early with a childhood declaration that she wanted to become the first female U.S. president and took her to internships with former Sens. Al Gore and John Kerry and, eventually, the Minnesota House.

A Catholic Sunday school teacher, she was driven by a desire to right wrongs and take care of the neediest. She followed that ethos in her early years as an attorney defending tenant rights and later at the State Capitol, where she shepherded landmark progressive policies into law and mentored many public servants along the way.

Mark Hortman, a program manager at a tech firm in St. Louis Park, was remembered as a devoted political spouse who tended to his family as well as his sourdough starter. He saw an opportunity when he and Melissa met mentoring the same student decades ago in Washington, D.C.

Walz was a pallbearer at the funeral along with DFL state Rep. Zack Stephenson and the Hortmans’ son, Colin, who wept as palls were placed over his parents’ caskets. Mourners wiped their eyes and sniffled as the pallbearers escorted the caskets to the front of the basilica.

Colin Hortman fought back tears as he read the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which Melissa always kept in her wallet.

The Rev. Dan Griffith told attendees in his homily that Catholic social teaching says authority should be oriented to the common good. Melissa embodied that and “manifested a servant’s heart,” he said.

Griffith told the Hortmans’ children, Colin and Sophie, they would continue to feel their parents’ presence throughout their lives: “In big moments in your life. And in small, quiet moments. They will continue to be present to you.”

Robin Ann Williams, a close friend of the Hortmans, said she knew the couple long enough to be there for Colin’s first words, trips overseas together and countless dinners in the kitchen of their Brooklyn Park home.

As Melissa’s political career progressed, she would go to the White House or the governor’s mansion for events and then come back home and share Indian takeout with Williams and their spouses. She was like a balloon, Williams said, tethered to the ground by Mark.

“We are buried in sorrow right now,” Williams said. “But I do believe that we will experience joy again. And Mark and Melissa would not want it in any other way. Goodbye, my friends.”

After the service concluded, the basilica’s bells rang as pallbearers brought the caskets out of the church in a somber procession and placed them in hearses waiting outside.

A state trooper presented Walz with the American and Minnesota flags that flew over the State Capitol the day Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed. As rain gently fell on the crowd, Walz solemnly turned and presented the flags to Colin and Sophie.

Mourners embraced each other tightly and began to disperse as the basilica’s bells continued to toll.

Stephenson said Melissa and Mark Hortman were “exceptional human beings, and they deserved a day like today.”

“It was a beautiful, beautiful service that put at the center who Mark and Melissa were as people. They were devoted to service and community and their family and friends,” said Stephenson, who volunteered for Melissa’s second campaign for the state House when he was a high school senior.

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy was overcome with emotion as she remembered Melissa as her “dear friend” and legislative partner.

“We have sent her on ahead of us,” Murphy said. “She will find [her] way, and we will follow the beacon that she’s left for us.”

Tears welled in the eyes of former Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin as he said he had known Melissa for half his life.

Martin, now chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the Hortmans’ service to Minnesota would never be forgotten and it would take time to heal.

“This community has really come together,” Martin said. “Not just Democrats, not just Republicans, but the whole state grieves today.”

Former GOP House Speaker Kurt Daudt welled with tears as he spoke of Melissa Hortman, whom he sparred with on many occasions during his time in the Legislature. She was among the most effective legislators at the Capitol, Daudt said, and she rose to power because she gave a voice to people who didn’t have one.

Daudt said the attack on a member of “our own legislative family” is a clear sign that political rhetoric in the U.S. has gone too far.

“I really hope that we as a state and as a nation can learn from this,” Daudt said.

“We need to be more respectful in our political speech and make sure that we understand that everybody, while they may disagree with us, they’re still humans and they’re doing what they believe is best for the state.”