Olson: Erin Murphy wades through grief with lessons learned from Melissa Hortman

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With a family trip to Ireland, her first grandchild on the way and the next elections not on the calendar until November 2026, this might have been one of the happier and more relaxed summers for Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy.

Instead, she’s battered by personal and professional grief after the assassination last month of former DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Brooklyn Park home, along with the shooting of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their Champlin home.

“The loss, it’s not real yet,” Murphy said recently in a pensive, sad interview in her Senate office. “It’s not real.”

Murphy and Hortman were friends and close colleagues for more than two decades. Murphy was elected to the House in 2006, two years after Hortman won a House seat. Hortman held the House speaker’s gavel when Murphy won election to the Senate in 2020.

For the past two sessions, as the two led their respective caucuses, Hortman and Murphy were aligned, together at news conferences, arriving and departing as a duo from closed-door talks with Gov. Tim Walz and Republicans.

Murphy spoke reverentially of her late colleague’s skill, tenacity and optimism. “We are going to get that budget balanced,” Murphy said, recalling Hortman’s encouragement. “She was such a partner, such a teacher.”

Hortman’s wellspring of energy and wisdom deepens the loss for those closest to her, including Murphy.

Murphy said she received the news of the shootings early on June 14 in a phone call from Walz’s chief of staff, Chris Schmitter, then spent much of the day on the phone, checking on the whereabouts of other senators, talking to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and, eventually, calling St. Paul City Hall to ensure she had adequate security at her home.

The depth of the horror hit Murphy when she heard Walz at a news conference refer to the murders as assassinations. The tragedies came hard on the heels of a year of personal losses for Murphy, including the death in late 2024 of 62-year-old former DFL Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic from cancer.

Using expletives, Murphy described the recent shootings as the lowest point.

“It has a lot of fingers in my beliefs around democracy and the state of public affairs right now, the state of political communication and discourse, disinformation and the free will of a president who dehumanizes and demeans people and activates that,” Murphy said. “The one thing I don’t think we can do is brush it off as an isolated incident, but we also, at least for me, can’t get subsumed by it.”

The senator isn’t yet drawing public conclusions about the accused shooter, but law enforcement has detailed that he had a hit list, including DFL politicians, their hometowns and progressive organizations in his vehicle.

“It’s not a both sides thing,” Murphy said. “There was a point to it and I want to understand that.”

Internally, Murphy described an ongoing tug-of-war between her reflex to fight back and concerns about the fundamentals of our democracy. “It is just such a profound injury,” she said.

The shootings are an injury “to our freedom, to our ability to say what we believe in and act on it, our ability to govern with the power that people give us, to represent the interests, to confront challenge.”

She wept as she explained that her decision to seek public office was rooted in hope and purpose, but that she’s reflected recently on whether it’s reasonable to continue. “I think that’s a conversation we all have to have with our families,” she said.

Murphy said she has her family’s support, but it’s not an easy road ahead for anyone at the Capitol. Amid the personal grief journey, she must publicly steady her caucus, which has just a one-vote margin over the 33-member Republican Senate caucus.

The DFL Senate’s work lately has been about attempting to shield Minnesotans from President Donald Trump’s ire and policies that target everyone from university presidents, wealthy law firms and media outlets to undocumented immigrants, women seeking reproductive care and gay, lesbian and transgender citizens.

To that long list of protective work, add the safety of Minnesota’s elected officials at the Capitol, in their homes and in the field where they meet with constituents. Expect a long and difficult discussion about future public access and security at the Capitol complex.

Murphy laid down a marker, citing openness and access as cherished traditions while acknowledging that Minnesota is “probably behind the curve in terms of thinking of the legislative branch as a separate branch of government and our own measures of safety.”

Her office in the Senate’s building overlooking the main Capitol dome already has enhanced security. Key cards and appointments are newly required to access the building and offices. As she spoke, propped in her office window behind her was a decoration with multicolored glass panels and the words, “Love wins.”

These days, Murphy’s fighting for optimism. “The standard bucket of hope I have is empty right now,” she said.

She can still see possibilities, including a commitment to connectivity over division and distance, a weaving of ourselves together. She said she leans into the spirit of perseverance she learned from a childhood in the Catholic Church. “Our motto at home was stay and fight. Stay in the church and fight to make it better,” Murphy said.

Since the shootings, Murphy said she’s been talking to prospective DFL candidates for 2026 and they’re all still ready to go.

As for finding courage at this moment, Murphy picked up a plastic yellow wiffle-ball bat a friend gave her years ago when she first ran for office.

“You have to believe enough in yourself that you can take on the work of others and actually serve them,” she said. “It takes courage to ask people to give you money, to give you their vote, to believe in you. All those things take courage and this just adds a new really unfathomable layer of, ‘You want to do this with me?’”

For the tough days ahead, Murphy’s still receiving inspiration from Hortman. “If I learned anything from Melissa these last couple of years, it’s that failure is not an option,” Murphy said. “She showed me that, over and over again.”