A Tribute to Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman with Cristine Almeida

[00:00:11] Welcome back to another episode of The Political Life. This is Maggie Mick and today we're going to have a special conversation reflecting on the life and leadership of the late speaker Melissa Hortman who was politically assassinated over the weekend alongside her husband Mark. I am honored to be joined by a friend and colleague Christina Almeida from Minnesota.

[00:00:38] She leads one of the leading public affairs and lobbying firms in the state capitol and we're going to have a chat about an amazing person and leader who we tragically lost in our state community this weekend.

[00:00:56] But before we talk about her, I do want to introduce you to Cristine just so that you know her and her time in Minnesota politics. So welcome, Cristine. And we always ask the first question is always the same. Where did you start your political life?

[00:01:16] Cristine Almeida Well, first of all, good morning, Maggie, and good morning to your audience. I'm really happy to be here and I'm really sad to be here at the same time, given our topic today, but I'm so grateful for the opportunity to talk about Melissa Hortman and her life and her legacy and her career.

[00:01:33] Cristine Almeida So to give you a little bit of my background, I've spent my entire career in public policy either on the inside of legislative affairs as a staffer at state legislatures, both in Wisconsin and in Minnesota.

[00:01:47] Cristine Almeida And most recently, over the last 18 years, I've had my own public affairs firm where we represent a number of different kinds of clients before state legislatures, state agencies, we do a little bit of federal work and are proud to be part of the political community in Minnesota. And you're an attorney as well? Cristine Almeida I am.

[00:02:11] Cristine Almeida And so when you think back to all the many years that you've been in the building and in the Capitol, do you remember when you first met Speaker Hortman? Cristine Almeida I do remember when I first met Speaker Hortman. She was then first term Representative Melissa Hortman. I was the chief of staff of the Minnesota Senate. And we were in a political situation then in Minnesota where the governor and the House were controlled by Republicans and the Democratic Senate.

[00:02:40] Cristine Almeida In Minnesota, of course, we're the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. So if you hear me slip into DFL, that's why. We are the DFL Democratic Farmer Labor, which is a throwback to Hubert Humphrey and a number of other great people who pulled the party together decades and decades ago with that name. I was the chief of staff of the DFL Senate, which had a one vote majority at that time with the Republicans controlling the governorship and the House of Representatives.

[00:03:08] Melissa Hortman was a first term minority member. And we actually worked really closely with the Democratic minority in the House to try to keep them in the fold, to try to help them understand our strategy as the majority, as the one sort of entity of Democratic majority. And I met Melissa back then in 2005. She was clearly a very smart, up and comer, ambitious person.

[00:03:35] She had come out of working for legal aid. And so for Melissa Hortman, public service, I think, was just so deeply always in her blood. She'd gone to law school at the University of Minnesota, ran for public office a couple times and lost. And then finally won in 2004. So the 2005 session was her first one. I met her then in part because that year we had a government shutdown. The budget was not complete by the end of May when it needed to be.

[00:04:04] And we spilled into overtime in the summer and then had a partial government shutdown as of July 1 of 2005. She was one of several, primarily women in that caucus who came to those of us in the majority leader's office and said, we need to work with you. We need to understand your strategy here. She said, I'm a first termer and I'm scared. And I remember thinking, what a clear and honest thing to come and say.

[00:04:32] Like, I don't understand this and I want to understand it. And I'm scared for my political future. What are we doing? Let's work together. That was my first time that I met her. And we became friends. We stayed in touch over the course of time. She grew in her, you know, I left that chief of staff job. I started my own business. She grew in her political career pretty quickly, in great part, Maggie, because of her demeanor.

[00:05:00] Melissa Hortman was a person who was steady as she goes and showed up every day as the same person. She was not emotionally volatile. She was not ego driven. She was not happy, then sad, then mad. She was just steady as she goes and had a really clear sense of herself and her views.

[00:05:23] And so she was just able to navigate that political environment, which in a state house of in Minnesota, it's 134 members. It's a huge body. And just the body politic and navigating all those personalities is a challenge for anyone. But she had a really unique ability to do that. So that's a little bit about our history. And then last night, there was a memorial on the Capitol lawn for her. I think someone had spoke.

[00:05:52] I read about this in the clippings. But to your point about her steadiness, they said or they reflected that she had incredible brain-to-mouth discipline. And I loved that. I think that that is such a strong characteristic of a leader, especially in such a human-driven process that we find ourselves in. Yeah, that's a beautiful description of her. And I had not heard someone say that. But I think that's right. She did have that.

[00:06:22] She also had such a unique ability to go, you know, when you're the speaker or the leader, whether it's minority or majority, your schedule is crazy. And you go from meeting to meeting to meeting, to press conference, to press interview, to meet with the governor, to meet with a member of your caucus who is mad, to talking to constituents.

[00:06:45] And Melissa had such a unique ability to be in the moment and present in every one of those meetings. She was not a person who was half looking at her phone, thinking about the last meeting, taking notes about something else, distracted by being hungry, whatever. You know how these things happen in a legislative environment. You would get in there with your topic or, in my case, with my client or with whomever.

[00:07:11] And she would just settle and focus on exactly what you brought to her, exactly where you were with your issue. She would candidly tell you, I am not with you on this. Or I am with you on this. Or I might be with you on this. But have you talked to so-and-so? And she was just so present.

[00:07:30] And I think to be that way all day, every day in this kind of environment with your caucus, leading a group of people that's sometimes really volatile, it's just a gift and such a unique thing. Honestly, I don't know anyone in Minnesota politics right now that's like that, quite to the degree that she is.

[00:07:50] So I think the path to leadership or being in that number one spot in a chamber is such an interesting case study in every instance. And she was elected speaker in 2018. And I remember that year we had nine women governors elected after that election. And she was part of a class of women who all rose to that top speaker or chamber leader position.

[00:08:18] You had Andrea Stewart-Cousins in New York. You had Adrienne Jones in Maryland. And then you had Speaker Hortman in Minnesota, among some others. But I just, I remember sitting at CSG and I had invited her to speak about her ascension because I think it's so informative to other leaders. We had some very nice back and forth. We could never make the date work. I so regret it now.

[00:08:40] But why do you think that she rose and got the confidence of her chamber and took that position? And then in Minnesota, because you have divided government, sometimes there's so much volatility because of who's in charge, who won the last election. Sometimes there's a lot of turnover in leadership because of the in and out, I guess, of party control.

[00:09:06] How was she able to maintain that level of confidence from her peers over the course of the past, I guess, six, seven years? I believe that it's a combination of skills and abilities that she possessed that allowed her to do that. Melissa was a person who would tell you what she was going to do, do it, and then come and tell you that she did it.

[00:09:35] And not because of ego, but because of follow through. So as a member of her caucus, I think her caucus felt like, again, I keep coming to that word, reliable, like politically reliable, emotionally reliable, so smart. She was going to start coming to the table every day with a sort of public service energy. And like you said, that sort of brain-to-mouth discipline and a clear, clear thinker.

[00:10:04] She just instilled confidence as she worked in the groups of people within her caucus, whether you were a member on the far left, whether you were a member more to the center of the Democratic caucus. Melissa just had that unique, very, very, very, very unique ability to cut to the chase with people, instill trust, understand the issue and understand the emotion.

[00:10:34] So it's like high IQ and high EQ combined in one person is just a powerful set of strengths. And I think sort of the best thing that you can have in a leader, I think that is really the reason for her longevity and leadership positions. So in 2022, Minnesota got a Democratic or DFL trifecta.

[00:10:57] And can you take us through kind of the two years where she was able to work alongside her fellow Senate and the governor to kind of advance some big wins in that time? Yeah, that was a really incredible time to watch the legislature because, as you said, the governor, Tim Walz, won re-election. That was his re-election campaign. And there were majorities for the Democrats in the House and Senate.

[00:11:27] They had, I am aware that the leader of the House, the leader of the Senate and the governor, so Hortman, then it was Kerry Dietzik in the Senate and Governor Walz, had a meeting right after the election in 2022 where they sat with each other and said, how do we want to handle this? This is a very unique situation here. Let's not waste it.

[00:12:19] A number of really significant and big, big issues became law because of that trifecta. And she was very much in the center of that. I mean, I feel like looking back at her career, probably those two years were maybe one of the highlights of it. Or I think she would think that it's one of the highlights of it because of how much they were able to accomplish that in terms of Democratic priorities.

[00:12:42] And in terms of that long list of achievements that they got done in that time, do you think that she would point to one as kind of her biggest legislative one? Gosh, to point to one, I think maybe her biggest, she was really into energy. She was big into clean energy and caring about the environment.

[00:13:07] So I think the clean energy one was an important one for her, although she very much had a hand in all of these things that went through. So in 2025, you know, January seems like a million years ago now. But everyone was kind of focused on the Minnesota power sharing agreement because of how the votes came down. Can you walk through, you know, how the makeup of the House and how that agreement was struck?

[00:13:33] Because I think when folks saw the headline over the weekend about her tragic passing, you know, she was referred to as Speaker Emeritus or Speaker Emeritus. And it's like, okay, well, is she the Speaker or is she not? So can you take us through, like, where we started 2025 and her role this session? Yeah. So in the 2024 election, the House of Representatives in Minnesota was a 67-67 tie after the recounts.

[00:14:00] There was one particular person who was, this is a longer story, but the short of it is he was deemed to not live in the district he had won. So the balance went from 67-67 to 67-66. There's 134 members. And so 67 is a tie. 68 is what's needed to pass a bill.

[00:14:25] And because of that, there was a special election, a Democrat won. And all of that was happening as the legislative session began. So the session began with the Republicans having a one-vote margin that everyone figured correctly would be a temporary one-vote margin.

[00:14:48] For the first three weeks of the session, the Democrats stayed out of the building, refused to participate in the session because they had come to a power-sharing agreement with the Republicans. And then the Republicans said, for these three weeks, because we are in charge, we are not going to honor the power-sharing agreement that we've come to. We are going to run the place the way we want to because we have a one-vote majority. If it becomes a tie again, then we'll talk about power-sharing again. But until then, we won't.

[00:15:17] The Democrats got really mad at that and decided to not show. So that was a really stressful time. And a lot of people questioned the wisdom of having the Democrats not show up there for the first three weeks. Until the special election happened, it went back to 67-67 tie. And at that point, there was another negotiation that took place. And it is at that point that it was determined that the current Republican Speaker, Lisa Dameth, would take the title of Speaker.

[00:15:47] And Melissa Hortman would sort of step away from that and not really be a co-speaker because there can only be one speaker. And then she was given that title of Speaker Emerita. She very much remained the leader, the number one person in her caucus. But that's the way that came down. And in terms of this session, under very interesting conditions, what was the highlight of this session maybe for her?

[00:16:15] Or maybe what was the toughest vote under kind of a difficult power-sharing agreement? Yeah, I would say the toughest vote, Maggie, was the vote that she took on the issue of health care being provided for undocumented people in Minnesota. This was an initiative that was brought forward by Republicans as a must-have.

[00:16:39] And the situation in Minnesota is such that in the 23-24 session, when the Democrats held control of all three entities, House, Senate, and Governor, they passed health care for undocumented people living in Minnesota. That has now been repealed. As part of a leadership agreement that Melissa Hortman made with the Senate and the governor and her Republican counterparts, the agreement was to remove that coverage.

[00:17:07] As of January 1, 2026, undocumented people over 18 in Minnesota will no longer have access to health care coverage like they have had. The House DFL caucus in particular, there was a revolt. And in particular, the more left-leaning members, many of whom are people of color whose family members, neighbors, parents are immigrants, et cetera. They know people who are on this program.

[00:17:37] And that was really, really hard. In the end, Melissa Hortman was the only Democrat to vote for that bill. And she did it because that was the agreement she had made in the leadership circle. And I think that had to be, I think, the toughest vote for her to take, in part because she thought it was the wrong thing to do. But it was a necessary part of an agreement to close out the session.

[00:18:05] And it so angered her caucus. Those trades at the end of session, sometimes they make no rhyme or reason because they're based on policy trades and procedural trades. And it's really hard to prognosticate on how people will vote at the end of session because it's not just on that issue. It's not just on that policy. There are five other policies behind it.

[00:18:34] Yes, you're exactly right. And this particular one, Maggie, the issue for a while there was a fight about whether to include that policy in a larger omnibus bill. And the decision was made to have that bill go as a standalone to separate out the vote because with the close margins we have, an omnibus bill might have failed if they hadn't separated that out on a 67-67 tie.

[00:19:01] So in terms of the aftermath of this horrific crime, we've talked before we started the recording about this trend of violence against public officials and how many friends around the country and your colleagues in Minnesota have really felt a lot of pressure in recent years. You know, we learned that there was a list of other lawmakers.

[00:19:28] Other lawmakers in Minnesota were visited that evening. Just in terms of like how folks are feeling, that whole public office, the security measures now in place in Minnesota, just anything from the ground that could inform other policymakers in other states of how you all are responding to this and the culture of kind of fear of public service that's kind of started to emanate. Yeah, this one is so hard to answer.

[00:19:58] People are so afraid and people go into these jobs. And as we all know, there's sacrifices to your family and time away from your kids and time away from elderly parents and missing parts of your life because of the hours and the grind of a legislative session. And to have this element of fear for your life, I think sheds an entirely different light on what public service means now.

[00:20:28] And I'm emotional about this because it's so hard. We are still in the midst of figuring out here in Minnesota what this is going to look like. And members were notified on Saturday morning after this tragedy occurred to varying degrees. And so some members were told shelter in place and there was security sent to their homes.

[00:20:56] Some members didn't hear about it until later and there wasn't security sent depending on where they lived. So that's a strange sort of unanswered situation that we don't quite understand yet. And so there's two things here. The question of member security at their homes because these tragedies happened at people's homes where this individual went to their homes with a list of people impersonating a police officer,

[00:21:23] had like the equivalent of a squad car, turned the lights on and either rang the doorbell or just shot through the door. So there's that level of security in people's homes. And then there's security at the state capitol and in the capitol complex. In Minnesota, we have not had metal detectors. But as I understand it, we're one of the few states that doesn't in their state capitals. And I'm quite sure we are now going to move to a situation where there are metal detectors, more presence of security, state patrol, police, capital security.

[00:21:54] But it's so early after this tragedy, we're still in the process of sorting it out. Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see what type of recommendations come out nationally through organizations like NCSL and CSG that can help guide funding decisions and security decisions. This is something that I just don't think is going away. I hope another tragedy does not occur, but we need to be proactive to protect our electeds. Absolutely.

[00:22:22] So going back to your mention of the personal commitment that lawmakers make when they step forward and put their name on a ballot and thinking back to last night when you were standing on the capitol lawn, Speaker Hortman's life was in that capitol. She was there for a long time. Her personal decisions are reflective on the lawn.

[00:22:50] Can you talk about like the trees that have been planted? And I believe that she had a special family moment that occurred there not too long ago with one of her children proposing on the floor. Just any reflections on her time there? Yeah, boy.

[00:23:12] You know, lawmakers over the course of their careers, if they're there for a while, absolutely do leave their imprint on the building and on the place and on the environment and the capitol grounds. Melissa Hortman was a big gardener. And so the issue of the capitol grounds and what was on them and the trees, the planting of trees, there were old trees there that had died and they took them out. She had a hand in selecting some of the new trees that were put in.

[00:23:41] And I just read in a story this morning, people are calling those Melissa Hortman trees. And I love that because she cared about that stuff. When the session ended every year, her social media posts became about taking walks with her really beloved dog, Gilbert, her golden retriever who was also killed in this incident. And gardening and being outside, getting her hands in the dirt, weeding, planting stuff, being in gardens, sitting in gardens and enjoying them.

[00:24:10] That was so much a part of who she was and what she loved to do. There are many, many stories of her impact and evidence of her preferences and so on and so forth in the capitol building from activities in the retiring room to activities on the floor. And I, too, read the story about her son and the proposal on the house floor. And that all, that just sounds like her.

[00:24:36] You know, she was just a fundamentally good person who wanted to make the world better and was in public service for all the right reasons, which as time goes by, I feel like having been in this business for a while, people get into public service for different reasons. Sometimes it's a lot of ego. Sometimes it's for a specific issue. I think everybody goes with a desire to improve people's lives or help people.

[00:25:02] Melissa had such a unique way of doing that because of her brain, because of her heart. It's just, it's going to be such a different place without her. So if you had a message for her to adult children about what everyone in the political core will miss most about her and her legacy, what would you share with them?

[00:25:24] I would tell them their mom was so loved and so respected, so smart, and just a fundamentally good person who cared a lot about kindness and lived it in the political life. And that is really rare. Kindness in the political world, those are two sort of concepts we don't put together very often. And she embodied that. Yeah.

[00:25:53] Well, thank you, Christine. We're thinking of you and all of your colleagues in Minnesota and the Hortman family, of course. And just appreciate your reflections today about a great speaker and a great human. Thank you so much, Maggie. It's my honor to be able to talk about her. Thank you. Thank you.