Olson: In Melissa Hortman, so soon after Kari Dziedzic, Minnesota politics loses another selfless leader

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Former House Speaker Melissa Hortman’s final session in the Minnesota Legislature didn’t go the way she wanted it to, but it went the way she knew it had to.

Before she was assassinated in her Brooklyn Park home on Saturday alongside her husband, Mark, Hortman had selflessly and gracefully navigated a difficult chapter in her political career.

The rough 2025 session followed the triumph of 2023 when, as House speaker, she worked alongside Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, DFL-Minneapolis, and Gov. Tim Walz to carve into state law a flotilla of progressive policies that will make life better for generations of some of the more fragile Minnesotans.

Free meals for all school kids. Paid family and medical leave. Protections for abortion rights, transgender, gay and lesbian Minnesotans. Restored voting rights for felons upon release from incarceration.

Hortman, Dziedzic and Walz stamped that transformative session into history books in May 2023 with a celebratory and choreographed walk down the Capitol’s white marble steps, a victory lap with supporters on a blazingly bright, windswept early summer’s day.

The moment was remarkable then for what had been achieved. It’s remarkable now for what has been lost: Two extraordinary, agile leaders and exemplary human beings.

That ceremony was one of the last times Dziedzic was seen at a big public event as she privately battled ovarian cancer. The images of Hortman warmly, carefully hugging her friend that day are now historic. Dziedzic was noticeably frail and thin.

Her cancer eventually returned. She stepped down from leadership in February 2024 to focus on fighting for her life and died in December at age 62.

And now we’ve shockingly, horrifically lost Hortman. These two like-minded and selfless leaders are both, devastatingly, gone.

In her final weeks, Dziedzic knew her time was short. She kept at it, using her dwindling energy and clout to ensure that those who followed would have an easier path. When she could no longer leave her home and she no longer bothered to wear a wig, she held online sessions with top health care executives to describe obstacles in her coverage. She wanted to make the cancer journey easier for those who will follow.

Dziedzic and Hortman shared an approach to politics that wasn’t mean-spirited or self-aggrandizing. They shared credit and power with their colleagues, especially the younger ones. They focused on the work and told others to do the same. Neither trafficked in gossip, pursued gotcha moments or sought to undercut rivals. They played fair and trusted that good policy would prevail.

Both gave up their leadership roles in moments that had to be privately painful but that they presented publicly as pragmatic. Just as Dziedzic gave up her leadership role, Hortman ceded the speakership of a tied House to Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring. Hortman’s sacrifice allowed Demuth to become the first person of color to lead a chamber and, more significantly, got the session started when it could have become mired in procedural bickering.

A lesser politician and human being would have sought to undermine the new speaker. Hortman did no such thing. She went to work for her caucus and built on the strong relationship she and Demuth already had from the past two years.

Another annoyance for Hortman at the session’s outset: She had to deal with a winning DFL candidate being ruled ineligible to serve because he didn’t live in the Roseville-area seat he won.

When Hortman was asked by a reporter whether the DFL should have vetted the candidate better and ensured that he lived in the district rather than Little Canada, Hortman responded matter-of-factly that the DFL wasn’t going to slap ankle monitors on candidates to track their movements.

In one of her final public acts in office, Hortman, again, swallowed hard and did what needed to be done. She, along with Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, and Walz, gave Republicans the win they coveted by agreeing to strip MinnesotaCare health insurance from undocumented adult immigrants.

Hortman then voted for the measure, the only House DFLer to do so, so it would pass.

When the deal was announced in the governor’s reception room last month, Hortman and Murphy appeared on the verge of tears, heartbroken. Demuth was pleased. Walz was sanguine.

As the questions flew from reporters, progressive DFLers from both the Senate and the House pounded on the closed door, chanting and angrily denouncing the deal.

Reporters continued to ask questions and the leaders tried to respond over the unsettling din.

As the event neared its end, one reporter cheerily asked what felt like an impertinent question given the DFL mood: Did the deal come to pass because good female negotiators were in the room? The ridiculous insinuation was that the women got the job done owing to their unique negotiating skills.

No one jumped in to answer, but after a beat, Hortman spoke, calmly reminding the reporter that the late Dziedzic’s contributions in 2023 should not be so quickly forgotten.

That was Hortman doing her thing: Speaking up for someone else, protecting someone who could no longer speak for herself.

It’s hard now to imagine Hortman responding to this horror with anything but pragmatism and compassion. I am convinced she’d be a step ahead of the rest of us who will grieve and mourn. We will try to send our support and love to her family and we will come up short.

We will struggle to understand the violence. We will be changed collectively and individually in ways we can’t yet know.

Like Dziedzic, I believe Hortman would want us to get to work. She’d grab another bag of Cheez-Its, as I saw her do last month in the late-session negotiations, and head off to another meeting, looking for ways to make life better, to heal, lift up, plug the gaps and rework the safety net.

Dziedzic had time to choose her parting words so I’ll end with what she wrote on the memorial card I keep on my desk even though it sounds impossibly and perhaps inappropriately upbeat: “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal. I hope you cherish the memories and smile. And continue to make new memories with your family and friends. Life is short. Enjoy it.”