
(Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and Her Mary Murphy Dinner Quilt. Photo by Meredith Cornett.)
I didn’t know Speaker Melissa Hortman well. I didn’t know her husband Mark at all. But over the past year, I got a glimpse of the woman taken from us by assassinasin. The word I’ve been using to describe the feeling, after my eldest son Matt texted me during the early morning hours of Saturday to inform me “The Speaker of the House and her husband were just shot,” is devastating.
I was a little boy, home ill from school playing with toy soldiers on a throw rug in 1963 when news of JFK’s assassination burst upon an old black and white console TV in our basement rec room. Walter Cronkite interrupted the soap opera Mom was watching as she did the family ironing and I reimagined the Alamo. Of course, I didn’t know JFK and, being so young (I’d just turned nine), the impact wasn’t the same as what we’ve just witnessed. Still, the president was an icon in our DFL home. We weren’t Catholic. We didn’t have a crucifix or a snapshot of Pope Paul (I think he was Pope when Kennedy was killed) on the wall of our den where the family black and white television drew us to “Gunsmoke”, “Combat”, “Highway Patrol”, “The Red Skelton Show, “The Ed Sullivan Show” and myriad other network programs we watched like clockwork. No. We were DFLers and the portrait next to the television set was a signed black and white headshot of John F. Kennedy given to my father as the head of the St. Louis County Democrats. Whether it was an autopen signature or real, I have no idea. Additionally, just weeks earlier, as a member of a standing-room-only crowd at UMD, I’d witnessed JFK deliver a speech. I can’t say I was smitten by his rhetoric: I fell asleep in the bleachers. But he was our leader and beloved by the entire Munger clan until he fell in Dallas.
I’ve written in detail about that day in my memoir, Duck and Cover, and won’t add more here other than to say, though I was saddened by what happened in Dallas, I was too young to be devastated. I’d say the same emotion-sadness-applied to the later assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby as well.
The closest I can come to what I felt, actually, what I feel right now, regarding this weekend, the level of inky darkness and despair that’s making it difficult to sleep at night, was the loss of Senator Paul Wellstone. Before you decry my comparison between a politically motivated killing of a state legislator and her husband in their own home under the cover of darkness (and an equally malevolent attempt to kill Senator Hoffman and his wife) with an airplane accident, hear me out.
I only knew Paul Wellstone from a distance. René and I held fundraisers for the Senator. As an author, I also asked for and received a blurb from Paul praising my first novel. Beyond that, my connection to the man was one of simple admiration for his dignity, values, and principles. But when I stood in the lobby of Wells Fargo in downtown Duluth the day his plane went down, watching the news crawler above the teller stations, my knees buckled. I was devastated. Again, I get the differences between murder and accident. I was a trial court judge for twenty-three years and a trial lawyer for nearly twenty. But the word, it seems to me as I try to process what just happened to our state, the place that prides itself on being Minnesota Nice, seems to fit both situations.
Given my age, I’ve suffered my share of loss. Both parents, many aunts and uncles and other relatives, all four grandparents, and numerous close friends have passed on. But all of those departures are a part of life; sad, yes, but not devastating. I reserve that word for the loss of my childhood friend’s young son (at the tender age of twelve) to a heart condition. And the recent, sudden, unexpected death of another lifelong friend whose passing I learned about via cell phone while gassing up my Jeep in rural Kansas. There are likely other losses, if space and time permitted, I could recount as being devastating. But they are rare, these occasions of unexpected loss that buckle the knees. Thank God for that.
I first became connected to Speaker Hortman when she called and asked me to run for Minnesota House Seat 3B. Her request came on the heels of a lunch with Senator Grant Hauschild, and additional calls from House Majority Leader Jamie Long and DFL Chair Ken Martin. A few days later the governor called. I didn’t bite right away. I called some folks I felt had the wisdom and clarity to give me sage advice. I called former Reps. Mary Murphy and John Ward: two old school, right-to-life Catholic, DFLers I admire greatly. Both urged me to run. After talking it over with my wife and kids, I decided I could, as a former prosecutor, trial lawyer, judge, and active community member, bring something to the political discussion. I told the Speaker and the Governor “yes”.
Understand, as a District Court Judge, I was forbidden to be involved in party politics during my decades of service on the bench. I bring this up because I had no understanding of where we are, other than as a spectator, regarding our collective fall from decency, integrity, and honesty in politics. I was a babe in the woods when it came to the nitty gritty of today’s political world. Immediately after the announcement of my run at the Hermantown YMCA (one of Rep. Murphy’s proudest achievements), conservative third-party bots began attacking my judicial record based upon untruths. I held my fire, though it was an eye-opener for me to have a forty-year career of public service trashed on YouTube. But through regular Zoom meetings with DFL legislators, including Madam Speaker, I calmed down, stayed the course, and got to work.
I first met Melissa when she and other DFLers drove up from the Cities to door-knock for my campaign. Though unable, due to her age and frailty, to walk the streets of Proctor with Madam Speaker, Mary Murphy was there to urge us on with a rousing speech. I learned that day how hard folks like Melissa Hortman, Mary Murphy, John Ward, and my uncle Willard work during campaigns! After that kick-off, I saw Speaker Hortman at least a half-dozen times in House District 3B, not only rallying the troops at the DFL office in the West End but walking the walk and talking the talk by door knocking throughout the five cities and fourteen townships that make up 3B. She was relentless, tireless, fearless (with no thought of her own personal safety), and determined in her effort to get me elected: far more so than this old man who had a hard time keeping up his motivation in the face of the incessant attack ads blaring away on streaming services and over local television.
After one of these “Speaker’s Knocks” in the rural townships, we gathered to debrief, share a meal, tell stories, and tipple an adult libation (with extreme caution, of course) at Little Angie’s. Melissa gave me a big hug, told me how proud she was of the hard work I was doing, and made sure to relate that most everyone she met on the doors knew my reputation for honesty and being a straight-shooter. I’ll admit I was pretty down after having folks slam doors in my face in a place where I’d been their judge for decades. Her reinforcement of why I was on this journey, and how things were going, made rejection bearable.
House 3B was seen as a lynchpin to the DFL retaining control of the House but things didn’t go the way either of us planned. I lost by 160 votes after a long, hard fought, positive campaign. The Speaker was, using my word here, devastated. She called me the morning after a very long, not so fruitful night of poll watching, expressing her appreciation, but more importantly, her empathy and kindness. “Mark,” she said, “I’ve been there. I lost twice before I was elected to my seat.” I didn’t tell her then, given that the magnitude of the Party’s loss went far beyond my personal disappointment, that I was a “one and done guy”. I knew in my heart I wouldn’t put myself or my family through the meat grinder of another political campaign but didn’t share that with Madam Speaker.
Over the intervening months, Melissa would pop up with a “like” or a comment on a post of mine on Facebook. I texted her a few thoughts about where the Party might want to look for another candidate, about how things might have been done differently, and I offered to meet with her and anyone else interested to hear my perspective. She texted “we’ll get together once session is over.” And then, just like that, session was over. But the legislature still hadn’t come to grips with a budget, a bonding bill, or the compromises needed by both sides to achieve completion of business. This is where Speaker Hortman’s leadership ability came to bear. Without her willingness to sacrifice legislation she held dear, the special session would’ve ended in shambles. She was (don’t believe me? Ask her Republican colleagues who say it’s so) able to bring House DFLers, many of whom who were crying “foul”, to the table to reach the agreements necessary to get the work done. And this is what is so stark, what leads to my incredulity as to why she and Senator Hoffman, along with their families, were targeted: they both supported compromise. They were, in no way, fire-branding idealogues. And yet, evil struck them and their loved ones down.
Just before the Special Session, René and I attended the First Annual Mary Murphy Memorial Dinner in Hermantown. The occasion was bittersweet: the dinner took place at the AAD Temple Shrine, the very building where I’d held my ill-fated election night watch party. When we left the building just before midnight on November 6, I was pretty sure I hadn’t carried the ball across the goal line. The numbers from Hermantown, the place our four kids went to school, the place I coached hockey and soccer, the place I volunteer in Scouting, the place I attend church, and the place my wife served on the Board of Education for fifteen years, showed me winning the city. But just barely so. Not enough to overcome the rural vote against me: the crazy, Liberal judge who let criminals out of jail to rape, pillage, and murder. But, despite a modicum of PTSD being in the place of my first and only electoral loss, René and I came to honor Representative Murphy’s legacy of public service. Before and after my speech, I had a chance to talk to Speaker Hortman. After introducing her to my wife, Madam Speaker leaned in and whispered, “Before I ask anyone else to run, I want to make sure you’re a hard ‘no’.” I nodded and René said, without hesitation, “He’s a hard no.”
That night, Melissa “won” the silent auction grand prize: a lovely, handcrafted quilt. She was tickled pink that she’d bested all comers (including Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy) to win that lovely treasure. As she packed up the quilt, I sent her what proved to be my final text to a truly great wife, mother, public servant, and woman. The person who made the quilt, a quiet Catholic mom and widow who lives near the Munger Farm, a person reluctant to share her politics with even her closest neighbors, had been the first resident in our township display a “Munger for House” sign in her yard. I thought Melissa needed to know that and said as much in my text. Her response? “I was going to put this beautiful quilt up at home. But because of the information you sent, it’s going up in my office at the capitol!” I shared that with the quilt’s maker a day or so later. She was so proud to know her handiwork would be displayed in the seat of our democracy.
In texts exchanged since Saturday’s awful news, my quilt-making neighbor and I agree: we’re both devastated. Our prays go out to the families impacted by an act of senseless political violence. For me, the only scripture from the Good Book that sums up how I feel is also the Bible’s shortest verse:
Jesus wept.
(John 11:35)
Rest in peace, Melissa and Mark.
Heal, John and Yvette and members of both families.
Judge Mark Munger