Melissa Hortman Didn’t Play Republican Games

Elected Democrats love to compromise. Even when they don’t have to compromise, they compromise, because compromising makes politicians look reasonable and practical and draws praise from the media and monied interests that have drinks with them after a deeply compromised bill is passed. 

Melissa Hortman, on the most important issues, did not compromise. She didn’t even pretend to compromise, like so many Democrats do in the face of vicious right-wing opposition, so often couched in the kind of bad faith that intentionally confuses the media and, eventually, voters. Hortman – along with Minnesota Governor and possible BFT subscriber Tim Walz – did not play stupid Republican games, and did not win stupid Republican prizes during her time as speaker of the Minnesota House. 

Hortman, as you know, was gunned down on Saturday alongside her husband, presumably for her progressive politics and unwillingness to cower to the right-wing agenda. The man who allegedly killed the Hortmans was a radicalized anti-abortion, anti-trans, Trump-adoring minister of some kind who devoured all manner of fascist media and engaged in the violence so prevalent in that media. So it goes: The legacy of the First Amendment. 

Any lawmaker killed for political reasons would qualify as tragic. Hortman’s murder seems doubly so considering the fierceness with which she advocated for marginalized groups and needy folks who have been abandoned by much (most?) of the American political class. Reading about Hortman, watching her speeches and press conferences, one quickly gets the idea that she refused to play Gavin Newsom’s awful and ineffective popularist game. Hortman, unlike the pathetic, jelly-spined elected Democrats acting as if we’ve seen a massive cultural shift, was never going to let Republicans create the narratives – and therefore the reality – that dictates public policy. 

Hortman was tough and straightforward and unbending in her advocacy for a more free and fair United States. For that she was shot and killed. It’s a goddamn shame. 

I wrote back in April 2023 about Walz and Hortman guiding a free lunch program through the Minnesota legislature despite a harrowingly narrow Democratic majority. Because the federal free and reduced price meals program is based on means testing that breeds the resentment that proves so valuable to the right wing, Minnesota Democrats stepped up and used part of a massive budget surplus to fill those gaps and ensure no child in Minnesota public schools goes hungry. 

These Democrats Are Running Roughshod Over Republicans With No-Faith Politics

You would think providing food for children would be a bipartisan issue, or even a nonpolitical one. You would, of course, be wrong about this. Making sure kids get food every day was the goal of Minnesota Democrats when they took it upon themselves to pass legislation providing free school

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Hortman didn’t try to justify spending millions on food for kids. She didn’t counter the bad-faith Republican arguments about children who do not come from low-income households potentially benefiting from the free lunch program. She didn’t break out the graphs and charts when Minnesota Republican lawmakers said no one in their state was going hungry, that hunger in the US is a left-wing myth. And she didn’t acknowledge the bad-faith nuclear bomb: How will we pay for this? 

“When kids come to school in the morning, all of them should be able to go to the cafeteria and get breakfast to start the day off ready to learn,” Hortman said a few days before the legislation was passed. “When they go to lunch, everyone should be treated the same way.”

When Republicans in the Minnesota House threatened to tank a basic funding bill unless it included attacks on the basic rights of transgender people in the state, Hortman got in front of the cameras and said absolutely the fuck not, I will not play that game.

How validating it must be to live in Minnesota and have a core principle that all Americans should have civil rights and watch as the top official in your state house comes out and says exactly that. Hortman doesn't waffle or consider any anti-trans sentiment that might exist in her coalition. She doesn't fear Republican reprisals. Hers is not the talk of a compriser, it is the talk of a defender of people who need defending. It is fearless talk.

Her position as house speaker didn't come without some agonizing decisions. Hortman in the final days of the 2025 legislative session cast the deciding vote to pass a state budget and avoid a government shutdown. Her vote meant undocumented folks in Minnesota would be ineligible for the state's low-income healthcare program – a Republican poison pill stuffed into the budget bill. “I know people will be hurt by that vote,” she said, trying and failing to hold back tears while explaining her decision to reporters. “I did what leaders do."

I doubt, after reading about her extensive contact with the less radical Republican members of the Minnesota legislature, that Hortman would have won the hearts and minds of folks who believe the only true counter to fascism is an ideologically pure movement committed to left-wing ideals (I was very much of this mind a decade ago; I've since been disabused of the notion via age and experience, as shitty as they are). Hortman didn't dream of a leftist revolution, but rather a functional government that responds to the needs of its people – the stuff normies are very much into. That sounds awfully fucking good right about now.

Two weeks ago on Bluesky, Hortman posted about the various accomplishments of Minnesota's Democratic-led legislature, which, unlike legislatures dominated by Republicans, values human life and dignity and well being. Against fierce Republican opposition, Hortman and the state's elected Democrats protected (relatively) generous family leave, the state's vaunted free lunch program, abortion care protections, and a range of worker-friendly policies.

Hortman, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, led the effort to declare racism a public health emergency, which it is by any definition. Not all of the police reforms progressives pushed in those early days of the Black Lives Matter movement came to fruition, but Hortman was steadfast in using the power of the state – and her key role in wielding that power – in favor of those who most need it to live a decent life, protected from the haters and scoundrels and monsters who seek only to spread their pain as widely as they can.

The public safety and judiciary budget legislation Hortman helped shape during the 2025 legislative session included critical protections for protesters in Minnesota and immigrants being targeted by Donald Trump's secret police operating in deeply dangerous and anti-constitutional ways. Under Hortman's leadership, Minnesota Democrats prioritized protections for the very people targeted by the country's tyrannical regime. Hortman's work and her advocacy is a good reminder that all politics are local.

We should be grateful for Melissa Hortman's work, and for her persistent refusal to give into the destructive right-wing games Democrats fall for time and again. She was not going to let Republicans' unreality affect her decision making. Hortman's willingness to stand strong for unpopular, forgotten groups of people who are so easily sacrificed at the altar of political expediency should be an example for every elected Democrat even remotely interested in beating back our creeping authoritarianism.

America's two major parties can appear so depressingly similar sometimes. Hortman was a reminder that they are not at all similar if they don't want to be. She was a champion for the hope that still flickers within us, even in all this goddamn awful darkness.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.