Democratic former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral Saturday where former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris joined the over 1,000 mourners.
Hortman was shot to death in a pair of attacks two weeks earlier by a man posing as a police officer that Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor has called an assassination. The shootings also left her husband, Mark, dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded.
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“Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. I get to remember her as a close friend, a mentor, and the most talented legislator I have ever known,” Gov. Tim Walz said in his eulogy. ”For seven years, I have had the privilege of signing her agenda into law. I know millions of Minnesotans get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service and politics.”
Neither Biden nor Harris spoke, but they said in the front row with the governor. Biden also paid his respects Friday as Hortman, her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda in St. Paul. Biden also visited the wounded senator in a hospital.
Hortman was the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans to lay in state at the Capitol. It was the first time a couple has been accorded the honor, and the first for a dog. Gilbert was seriously wounded in the attack and had to be euthanized.
Hortman, who was first elected in 2004, helped pass an expansive agenda of liberal initiatives like free lunches for public school students during the momentous 2023 session as the chamber’s speaker, along with expanded protections for abortion and trans rights. With the House split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she yielded the gavel to a Republican under a power-sharing deal, took the title speaker emerita, and helped break a budget impasse that threatened to shut down state government.
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Walz said Hortman saw her mission as “to get as much good done for as many people as possible.” And he said her focus on people was what made her so effective.
“She knew how to get her way, no doubt about it,” Walz said. “But s