Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota lawmaker who was gunned down in what is described as a politically motivated attack, earned degrees at Boston University and Harvard.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar remembered Minnesota Democrat Rep. Melissa Hortman as a "true public servant" who was "loved by Democrats and Republicans." The massive manhunt for the suspect, Vance Luther Boelter,

Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman was more than just the state House’s top Democrat, according to those who knew her. She “was a bright shining light of a human being,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon,

Melissa Hortman, the former Minnesota House speaker felled by an assassin’s bullet at her home on Saturday, really did understand what democracy looks like. It is emphatically not about the vile arrogance of extremists so certain of their superiority that they bestow on themselves the right to snuff out the lives of their political foes.

But there was a caring, apolitical gracefulness as well to Hortman, colleagues said. Garofalo said that in the days after the 2022 elections, when Democrats took control of state

Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, were shot and killed early Saturday morning in “what appears to be a politically-motivated assassination,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said at a news conference Saturday.

Authorities searched a vehicle on a rural road outside Minneapolis on Sunday that they believe had been used by the man wanted in the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers, as a state on edge struggled to make sense of the brazen political violence that left one leader dead.