Proposals would rename state buildings in honor of late Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL Leader Kari Dziedzic
Within a six-month period, Minnesota lost DFL Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic and Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, the two women who led the Legislature through a consequential two years when Democrats had a trifecta in state government.
Now, a proposal primed for a floor vote in the state Senate would memorialize both of them for their contributions to the state.
Dziedzic died following a battle with cancer in Dec. 2024, and Hortman was murdered in a political assassination in June 2025. The plan would rename the Senate Office Building, where senators and staff have offices, the Kari Dziedzic Senate Building and the State Office Building—which is currently under construction for a major renovation—the Melissa Hortman State Office Building.
The bill, which cleared a key Senate committee Friday, also includes other tributes to Hortman, like calling a stretch of Highway 610 connecting parts of her district the "Hortman Memorial Highway" and establishing a working group to look at designating part of the Capitol Complex grounds a state park named for the former speaker and her husband, Mark Hortman, who was also killed that night.
"Both of those individuals have an indelible mark on us," said Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin, of Hortman and Dziedzic. He's sponsoring the memorial package in the Senate.
DFL Gov. Tim Walz already signed into law renaming the state's community solar garden program, which was one of Hortman's proudest legislative achievements, in her honor. It passed unanimously in the House, where she served for 20 years.
House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson, who considered Hortman his mentor and longtime friend, said Democrats started with a long list of ideas of ways to honor her and then narrowed it down to a few that "kind of touched at different parts of her legacy and would reach different populations," he said.
All of the measures included in Hoffman's bill advancing in the Senate are important, he added. The House has similar legislation, though not all in one package yet. Democrats and Republicans in a tied House have to negotiate what can pass the chamber.
"There was a lot of interest, not just in the legislature, but from the public in doing something to remember Melissa and Mark—the first political assassination in Minnesota history of the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. And so it is altogether fitting and appropriate that we do things to remember her, to preserve her legacy, but also to teach the lesson about what happened so that it doesn't happen again in the future," Stephenson said.
Demuth said there are ongoing discussions about the other proposals to honor Hortman besides just the solar garden program, but she did not say which ones have GOP support at this time.
"The idea of honoring Melissa Hortman because of the tragedy, because of her time here in office for the state of Minnesota, is an important thing," she said.
