When Minnesota House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson grabbed his lunch order from the west doors of the Capitol on Thursday, he realized he wouldn’t be able to do that in a week, because that entrance would no longer be open to the public.
“Obviously, not a big deal. It’s just particularly this year, that will be a constant reminder,” he said, pausing. “Because you can’t think about that without thinking about the why.”
“So, yeah, it’s a very, very different world that we are living in now,” Stephenson said.
State Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, talks to colleagues at the Capitol on June 9. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
The closure of public entrances and the addition of weapons detectors are among the security changes to the Capitol in response to the June 14 assassinations last year of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassinations of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, and their daughter, Hope.
The Hortmans’ dog, Gilbert, also died of wounds from the attack.
The 2026 session, starting Tuesday, is the first in decades without Melissa Hortman at the Capitol.
“All the things that people say about grief are true, but the firsts are hard,” said Stephenson, who met Hortman when he was 17.
She was his friend and mentor for over half his life. The two were frequently seen side by side around the Capitol.
On Thursday morning, lawmakers gathered for the first pension breakfast, an annual event with public sector unions to talk about pension issues. Stephenson said Hortman cared a lot about that issue.
“There were a lot of damp eyes in the room as we kind of reflected on how it was the first time we were gathering for that breakfast without her. And session will be obviously a much more significant first than the pension breakfast,” Stephenson said. “So it will be a big challenge.”
‘A fixture and a giant’
When Gov. Tim Walz delivered the news of Hortman’s assassination, he called her a “fixture and a giant” in Minnesota.
Her presence in the Capitol grew large in the 20 years she was there.
“She wasn’t a camera hog at all. Being in the limelight was not her favorite part of this job by any stretch of the imagination, but like, when she would walk into a room, people noticed,” Stephenson said.
After the 2024 election brought the House to a tie, Stephenson said Republicans told him they spent the bulk of their post-election caucus discussing “How do we make sure Melissa Hortman doesn’t outmaneuver us in the power-sharing negotiations?”
“They always thought she was playing 3D chess, and, I mean, sometimes she was, but a lot of the time she was just going about her day,” Stephenson said.
Who she was, as a lawmaker and a leader
“She put the work above the flash of politics. So I think a lot about that when I think about how Melissa would approach problems — she cared about doing the right thing,” Stephenson said.
She could get into the weeds, he said.
Hortman never sponsored the bill for permanent daylight saving time, but she always had her name on it.
“She hated the switch. She was not a morning person, and the switch was rough, and she thought it was stupid. I mean, she’s very practical, no-nonsense,” Stephenson said.
Her former adviser in the room added that she’d go to bed earlier or later to prepare for it.
But there was a woman from the west metro — a French woman who would write really long emails to everyone listed on the bill — saying the state shouldn’t be in permanent daylight saving time, it should be in permanent standard time.
The woman would cite health and other impacts, with several footnotes and citations.
“I wrote it off as, like, not a serious person, right? Like, not her constituent, not even a citizen of Minnesota. Not only does she [Hortman] read the thing, she was convinced by it. She then thought we should be on permanent standard time from then on,” Stephenson said.
At some point, Hortman grew to not care which time the state was on, just that there wasn’t a switch.
“It says a lot about who she was,” Stephenson said. “She could get into the weeds on anything and everything. Cared about just doing it the right way, even on stuff that most people would not care about.”
After the 2024 election delivered a tie in the House, the speakership was one of the shiny bargaining chips for lawmakers during power-sharing negotiations before the 2025 session.
Everyone close to Hortman said after the fact that she was ready to give up her speakership long before her caucus was.
Stephenson said Hortman was “pretty quick to elevate other people,” and that she didn’t need credit for “hardly anything.”
“And give other people credit, even if it was credit for things that she had accomplished,” Stephenson said. “I think a lot of leaders would think that that made them weaker … I don’t know if she just thought it was the right thing to do, or if it was more strategic, but it made her stronger, actually — elevating other people.”
Rep. Dan Wolgamott, DFL-St. Cloud, left, and Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, right, talk as Rep. Danny Nadeau, R-Rogers, center, makes a case for a yes vote on the Health and Human Service Policy and Appropriation Bill during a special session at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Monday, June 9, 2025. The Minnesota Legislature convened for a special session Monday to finish work on the 2026-2027 state budget. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
At the end of the 2025 session, Walz and Democrats agreed after weeks of negotiations with Republican leadership to repeal MinnesotaCare for undocumented immigrant adults in order to reach a budget deal and avoid a government shutdown.
Stephenson said he didn’t think Hortman should have to vote “yes” to the repeal alone.
“I called her and talked to her about it, and she was like, ‘You will not vote yes on this bill’ … ‘I’m the leader … It’s my job,’ ” Stephenson recalled, adding that he thinks sending a clear message to the public that the House DFL did not support the repeal was important to her.
That vote has since been the subject of false theories about her death. Her children, Sophie and Colin, have since come out to say how difficult the vote was for their mom, and that her “struggle with that vote makes this conspiracy all the more painful for me,” Colin said.
“We worked very hard to try to get a budget deal that wouldn’t include that provision, and we tried any other way we could to come to a budget agreement with Republicans, and they wouldn’t have it,” Hortman told the press with teary eyes after the vote, just days before her death. “So, you know, I did what leaders do, I stepped up and I got the job done for the people of Minnesota.”
Stephenson said Hortman would tell a story from the last time there was a significant shutdown, about a government worker who died by suicide after not being able to pay the mortgage.
“It weighed on her, like, if we have a shutdown, people are really gonna suffer,” he said.
Lawmakers looking to honor her
Hortman’s senior adviser said Hortman would fixate on the little trees along the path from the Capitol to the Centennial building.
“There’s not enough shade here, right?” she’d ask.
Planting more trees is one of the ways lawmakers are looking to honor her this session.
“Melissa really cared a lot about trees,” Stephenson said. “She loved trees. Wanted more trees … I think every committee chair is going to be trying to figure out a way. ‘Can we have trees in the education budget to put trees around the playgrounds, and trees in the transportation budget next to roads?’ ”
Stephenson said there will be many more bills to honor Hortman, such as proposing naming buildings or a highway after her. Lawmakers are also looking for avenues to honor Mark and Gilbert this session.
Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said that as she gets closer to the start of the session, people are sending her photos of her and Hortman together.
“I think because they miss her. I miss her, too,” Murphy said. “And I guess she would say, ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’ And maybe the best thing I can do to honor her is to bring what she taught me into the work, and focus on what we need to do for the people of Minnesota.”
Minnesota State Patrol members carry the casket of DFL Rep. Melissa Hortman before a funeral ceremony at the Basilica of Saint Mary on June 28, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Law enforcement agencies captured Vance Boelter on June 15th in connection with the killing of Rep. Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were shot at their home on June 14th. DFL State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot and hospitalized in a separate incident. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said during a press conference that the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination.” (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
State lawmakers, Gov. Walz and others are expected to hold a remembrance for Hortman at the Capitol on the first day of the session.
Her photo and flowers will remain on her desk in the House Chamber for the whole session — along with the memorial outside the entrance to the chamber that is scattered with notes, flowers and photos from the public.
After June 14, politicians made a collective call to tone down the rhetoric in an effort to combat political violence. Stephenson said there have been so many unprecedented events since then, it could be harder to do that.
“It’s hard to compare to the baseline, because so much has happened, right? There’s June 14 itself, there’s Annunciation school shooting, there’s ICE, there’s a million other things going on, that all have amped up the emotion and the stakes that people feel right now,” he said.
“Even like the murder of Charlie Kirk has a lot of Republicans really amped up and amped up about things that Democrats said about that, right? All of this stuff raises people’s blood pressure in a way that would counteract that desire to tone down the rhetoric.”
The Minnesota House of Representatives Chief Clerk’s Office set flowers, a portrait and a gavel on Rep. Melissa Hortman’s desk in the House Chamber on June 14, 2025. Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were fatally shot in their Brooklyn Park home early June 14, 2025. (Andrew VonBank / Minnesota House of Representatives)
But one thing does give Stephenson hope: Melissa Hortman’s desk.
“Her desk will be a reminder, both quiet and loud; by which I mean, I hope that people … will see it and think about her, and think about that,” Stephenson said.
“But I also think that, if things get out of hand in the chamber, members will probably point to the desk, like actively in debate, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ I expect there will be moments like that. So I have hope about that, about her desk in the chamber being a real, visceral reminder about this.”
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