Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman reflects on DFL trifecta

House Majority Leader Jamie Long (left), House Speaker Melissa Hortman (center) and Rep. Kaohly Her (right) at a Capitol press conference on Thursday, May 16. Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer.

Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, was first elected to the Legislature in 2004 and became speaker in 2018. Her influence expanded significantly after voters delivered Democrats a trifecta over state government two years ago, and she played a central role in deciding which bills Democrats would prioritize.

In 2023, she helped pass the largest budget in state history, and presided over a more modest agenda this last legislative session, which adjourned on May 20.

Hortman says she’s now solely focused on the November election — where all 134 House seats are on the ballot — to maintain the Democrats’ slim five-seat majority.

The Reformer recently asked Hortman to reflect on the DFL trifecta’s record and why she believes Minnesotans’ lives are better now than they were two years ago. She cited the DFL’s headline-grabbing accomplishments over the biennium and said she believes right-wing Republicans have given Democrats an opportunity to garner more support in greater Minnesota.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you reflect on where Minnesota stands now compared to where the state was before the DFL trifecta took control about two years ago?

Minnesota is a much better place for workers, families and children. The real through-line from the ‘23 session to the ‘24 session is really protections for workers. We believe that when you go to work everyday and you’re working a full-time job, you should have a decent standard of living to be able to support your family. You should have reasonable time off, and you should have a reasonable opportunity at economic success.

We made that possible. The most rewarding piece of legislation we passed — for me — is paid family and medical leave. An average person can take time, whether it’s to take care of somebody who has cancer or to take care of a new baby. People shouldn’t have to choose between a job and recovering from illness.

Right up there with that is the earned safe and sick time legislation. When I think of big accomplishments, the conditions that we’ve changed for workers are really key. This year we did the worker misclassification bill. There are too many employers who take advantage of workers and they don’t call them employees and improperly treat them as independent contractors. We took a strong stand against worker misclassification — that’s one of the things the Republicans were filibustering at the very end. They were working really, really hard to let those cheating employers keep cheating.

From the word “go,” you can see that children were top of mind. Gov. Tim Walz gave a very inspiring state of the state address in 2023. He was very clear that his administration was focused on reducing childhood poverty. The DFL House and the DFL Senate said “Governor, we are right there with you.”

We passed free lunches and free breakfasts, the child tax credit to reduce childhood poverty by one-third, mental health supports for students in school and really substantial increases in voluntary pre-K slots and early childhood education scholarships — just a lot more investment in children.

I could go on and on. We took climate action because we don’t have a divided government. You don’t have to try to convince Republicans that climate change is real and we ought to do something about it, you can just go ahead and do it.

And then gun violence prevention, which is like the big “duh” to everybody who’s not in elected office. We clearly have a gun violence problem in this country, and there are things we can do about it and we did them.

One thing that’s top of mind for many people is reproductive freedom. We had a speaker at a recent Women Winning luncheon, and a woman from Texas — now a surrogate for the Biden campaign — had to just about die in Texas to terminate a pregnancy that was not viable.

It was a very wanted pregnancy and she had to go into septic shock before she could get that health care. I’m very proud of what Minnesota has done to protect reproductive freedom.

Also, protecting democracy. We have a person running for the highest office in the land who feels that the criminal laws of the country do not apply to him. Our democracy is at risk, and we did a lot to protect it through pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds, tougher penalties on intimidating election workers or interfering with elections — all of it matters when it comes to protecting this 200-year experiment.

What lessons have you learned since the DFL trifecta took over?

I think what we have to do is play in every single district. We’re seeing some districts where even the Republicans are creeped out by the people who are running and getting elected. I think that there are some very red districts that have gotten really Trump-y that are starting to endorse and send people to St. Paul who fundamentally don’t believe in government.

We saw those emboldened, fringe-y first-termers really stand up and get in the way of getting the work done, and I don’t think that they were people that Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, and House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, want to be doing what they were doing. Nonetheless, those folks were laying down on the railroad tracks.

I’ve been going out to districts to give gratitude to the folks who are running in seats that are harder to win. It just reminds me how important it is that in every district, we articulate what the Democrats are doing in St. Paul and why they are doing it. There are a lot of people out there who don’t know how hard we are working for them, because they don’t always have an opportunity to campaign for and vote for a Democrat.

We need to keep communicating where we are winning and we need to also communicate where we’re not winning and build up a broader geographic coalition.

I have no desire for us to be a predominately suburban- and city-based party. I’m used to being part of a party organization that’s a whole state party and I’m committed to keeping it that way and representing agricultural regions and the Iron Range, in addition to the cities and suburbs.

Are you disappointed about anything failing to pass this session?

People could say that it would have been great for us to get a bonding bill done. I’ve come to peace about that. Republicans decide whether there’s going to be a bonding bill or not. As long as they’re in the minority, they’re going to decide whether or not to provide their votes.

Every time I’ve been in the minority, my team has been willing to put the votes up there to help the majority party pass a bonding bill in the best interests of the state of Minnesota. I can’t control the behavior of other people. I can do everything in my power to extend the hand of compromise and work together, but ultimately, Republicans have to decide whether they’re going to do it or not.

Also, we had a record-breaking $2 billion bonding bill in 2020, and a record-breaking $2.6 billion bonding bill in 2023.

There were a bunch of corrections to last year’s bonding bill that we got through right away, and we could have held those hostage. There were a bunch of Republican projects that needed corrections because they took so long to make a deal with us last year. It was predominantly their projects where they hadn’t done their homework, where they had like “boulevard” instead of “street” in the address, and so their projects couldn’t get built.

We went ahead and did a corrections bill on the good-faith understanding that we were all working to get a bonding bill done together. Other leaders would have held that hostage to force Republicans to the table. I did a lot of things for the Republicans that I didn’t demand a counter payment for. I resolved their concerns over a religious exemption in the changes to the Minnesota Human Rights Act. I did the bonding corrections. There were other things that I did because they would ask me to and I would just take care of them and not make a trade.

Am I going to be more transactional in the future? I just don’t think that’s a way to run a state. My hope would be that Republicans would notice that it was a missed opportunity to be part of another bonding bill and they’ll choose to participate in the future.

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