Melissa Hortman’s influence at the Minnesota Capitol and her power as a Democratic leader to shape the course of a deeply divided Legislature were a far cry from her job as a teenager making chili-cheese burritos and overshadowed her volunteer work training service dogs for veterans.
She was a lifelong Minneapolis-area resident who went to college in Boston and then returned home for law school and, with degree fresh in hand, worked as a volunteer lawyer for a group fighting housing discrimination. Elected to the Minnesota House in 2004, she helped pass liberal initiatives like free lunches for pubic school students in 2023 as the chamber’s speaker. With the House split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she helped break a budget impasse threatening to shut down state government.
Tributes from friends and colleagues in both parties poured in after Hortman and her husband were shot to death early Saturday in their suburban Brooklyn Park home in what authorities called an act of targeted political violence. Helping Paws, which trains service dogs, posted a message on its Facebook page, along with a 2022 photo of a smiling Hortman with her arm around Gilbert, a friendly-looking golden retriever trained to be a service dog and adopted by her family.
