I was shocked when I heard about the murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and the attempted murder of John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. I knew and worked with Hortman on several pieces of legislation and also knew Hoffman, although not as well. I found Hortman extremely bright and compassionate. What most impressed me was her generosity. She volunteered invaluable advice on tactics about which legislators to approach and how.
In terms of her importance to Minnesota and the country, Hortman was indispensable. She was as important to our state as the governor and our two senators. What made her indispensable was that rare quality of being a person of principle who could facilitate bringing people together to find collective solutions to pressing issues. She held together a fractious Democratic caucus while trying to work with Republicans, some of them embracing “my way or the highway” tactics.
Much has already been written about her role in pushing through the most comprehensive package of legislation in my lifetime during the 2023 session. This year, she willingly gave up the speakership to facilitate a functioning House that was split 50/50. She helped to shepherd through a compromise bill that fittingly angered extremists in both parties.
The quintessential Hortman came when she denied a quorum at the opening of this year’s session to oppose Republicans who tried to thwart the rule of law by overturning a valid election. The GOP engaged in a blatant and despicable power grab without precedent in our state’s history, but one in keeping for a party that still claims the 2020 election was stolen and continues to justify the treasonous attempt to overthrow Congress on January 6.
In standing up for the rule of law while holding her party together, Hortman showed a spineless national party how to conduct an effective opposition. Had she, not Hakeem Jeffries, been minority leader in the U.S. House, the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” might never have passed in its present form. Hortman took heat for her stance, but in press conferences, she made it very clear it was a battle about principle. It will go down as one of the supreme profiles in courage of our times.
Through good times and bad, Hortman never evidenced an ounce of personal ambition. That is not to say she was not ambitious, but she was more about us than me. She could have coveted and probably been elected to various statewide offices, but never exhibited the me-first attitude of so many politicians for whom ambition has become a substitute for values. She was intensely partisan, but not to the point of sacrificing her beliefs and cowardly ignoring egregious disregard for our Constitution. As a lawyer, she believed in the rule of law and in maintaining a level playing field for all. Her assassination will be as stunning a blow to the people of Minnesota as the untimely death of Paul Wellstone, another politician who fought for a level playing field.
Discontent & Political Violence
Commentary about the Hortman assassination will focus on violence and guns. Much will contain the same ahistorical short-sightedness that has accompanied the post-election coverage of pundits who ignore the history of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Those rants and opinion pieces will fail to acknowledge that in this country, violence rides on the back of discontent.
The years from the end of the Civil War to the dawning of the next century (which I have termed the Age of Discontent) were the most violent decades in our history. Start with the presidential assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Lynchings averaged 150 per year between 1881 and 1900, or one every 2.4 days. Another 1,400 people perished in riots. According to Randolph Roth’s American Homicide, by 1900, we had become the world’s most murderous society.
People of color suffered heavily from this violence. We tend to forget the organized government violence summoned to defend the violations of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty that triggered the Little Bighorn battle and Wounded Knee. In the latter, cavalry turned Hotchkiss guns and other devastating firepower on women and children. It is painful to view the Library of Congress photographs of the aftermath of Wounded Knee, where bodies frozen in the final agonies of death lie stacked like cordwood in wagons.
We also forget the Day of the Rope, whose anniversary occurs on June 21. Ten miners walked up the thirteen wooden steps of the gallows that day in one of the largest mass executions in our history. The handprint of one of them still survives in his jail cell to remind us of the extent injustice can reach. The long-overdue pardon of another miner, who went to the gallows later, is displayed on the wall of the Pennsylvania tavern he once owned.
That pardon should remind us violence festers in the inequalities and injustices that spawn discontent. It is no accident that violence has again reared its visage during a time when corporate concentration and income inequality have reached levels comparable to those during the Age of Discontent.
In addition to the violence of strikes and other clashes between the Discontented and the plutocrats, the Age of Discontent also featured a dark side that periodically resurfaces in this country. Two forces lay behind this violence in the late nineteenth century: racism and nativism. Four million formerly enslaved people only asked the government to protect their newly won rights but were ignored by corporations who refused to employ them and a government that refused to defend them. The record influx of immigrants inspired more violence. Eugenics surfaced even in the hallowed halls of Harvard. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, white rioters killed 28 Chinese railroad workers, injured another 15, and burned over 70 homes. In Indianapolis, the Election Day Riot killed and maimed Blacks attempting to vote.
There will be the inevitable calls for gun control. Maybe the country will recover its sanity enough to agree that it is time to take assault weapons off the streets and out of the hands of Rambo wannabes. We should remember that some were concerned about excess firepower during the Age of Discontent. The assault rifle of those times was the sixteen-shot Winchester, which became the weapon of choice for Pinkertons, mine police, and assorted paramilitary groups. The Lattimer Massacre of 1897 occurred when “deputies” armed with Winchesters newly purchased by mine owners slaughtered unarmed miners. Years before, President Benjamin Harrison warned that it was a bad idea to equip private citizens with weapons that should be only for the military.
Hortman’s Legacy
If we focus solely on weapons, we forget the forces that lead to the creation of violence. It may be impertinent and perhaps disrespectful for me to say what Melissa Hortman would have us do in response to her murder, but I do know that she would want us to give it meaning. Each of us will have to decide for ourselves what that meaning will be, but we must dedicate ourselves to making that meaning.
That starts with understanding based on current information it was an individual, not a political party or even a group, who committed these horrible acts. In this sense, it fits the pattern of political assassinations committed by loners. We do know the fury of the crimes against the Hortman and Hoffman families is stomach-turning. We should not meet that fury with fury of our own.
That does not mean we should turn away from the need to confront our divisiveness and those who foster it. Nor should we ignore that the biggest source of political violence comes from the right. There are no left-wing equivalents to the Proud Boys and other neo-Nazi hate groups. Left-wingers did not engage in a treasonous assault on Congress. Left-wingers are not assaulting abortion clinics and threatening those who work there. There will be much rhetoric about building bridges, but it is hard to build bridges when some people keep blowing them up. It is hard to build bridges when social media algorithms reward the bomb-throwers and sowers of disinformation.
All we can do is keep trying, even when rebuffed, as Hortman did during the last legislative session. Minnesota has been fortunate in that there are enough bridge builders on both sides of the aisle. Hortman forged a working relationship with current House Speaker Lisa Demuth that allowed them to get things done. Neither was happy with the results, but neither issued inflammatory statements about that outcome or the negotiations that produced it.
It also does not mean we should not continue to oppose those who would divide us, as Hortman did when she blocked the Republican attempt to overturn a valid election. Currently, many of the usual suspects whose names will go unmentioned here are promulgating charges on the Internet that Governor Tim Walz had a role in the assassination attempt, something as ridiculous as it is inflammatory. These online brown shirts are little better than agitators intent on stirring up a fight. Meanwhile, the president has yet to call them out or call the governor and offer his help or condolences. Instead, he is calling Walz names.
This sickness has to stop before it infects us all like some awful pandemic of the mind. In the past Minnesotans have rejected such divisiveness, especially when candidates fostering it were on the ballot. Let us hope they will continue to do so.
We also need to be mindful of the historical long view. The parallels between the violence of the Age of Discontent and our discontents are there. Chief among them is the tilted playing field that is tearing this country apart. If we do not rein in corporate concentration, particularly in technology, and if we do not correct the inequities of a society where labor’s share of corporate profits has been declining since the Reagan administration, and if we do not deal with the racism that is demonizing immigrants and retreating from a commitment to diversity, we will fail to uphold the values Hortman personified.
Knowing the story of the Discontented intimately, I remain an optimist. Tempering that optimism is the realization of what it cost the Discontented to reinvent their country. I end with the words I chose to end The Age of Discontent. The Discontented met the challenge. Now it is our turn.