Walz said he considered leaving public office after Hortman assassination

Sofia Barnett, Star Tribune on Oct 11, 2026

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Gov. Tim Walz considered leaving public office after the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, according to a New York Times investigation into rising threats of political violence against elected officials nationwide.

Walz, who faced a flood of violent threats after joining Kamala Harris’ presidential ticket in 2024, told the Times that the June 2025 killings of the Hortmans, whom he considered close friends, led him to question whether he wanted to continue in politics.

“I didn’t want to do this job anymore after that,” he said. “Not just out of fear or anything, but the joy of public service, the joy of being with Melissa Hortman, and just how that was taken.”

Despite those doubts, Walz announced in September 2025 that he would seek a third term as governor. He reversed that decision in January, amid mounting scrutiny of his administration’s handling of widespread fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs.

The rise of violent threats to politicians nationwide mirrors an increase in Minnesota. The Star Tribune found that Minnesota lawmakers from both parties were already dealing with a sharp increase in intimidating and threatening behavior, including stalking and death threats, in the year before the Hortman assassination.

Walz told the Times that he worried about how to protect legislators who spend much of the year working outside the State Capitol.

“We’re a part-time legislature,” he said. “These folks go back home and teach school, run their business, they’re dentists, they’re nurses, they do all those things. How do you follow them in the nine months they’re not here?”

The threats have continued even as Walz’s term comes to an end.

“My daughter just sent me one yesterday,” Walz said, “where somebody said, ‘Wait what I’ve got in store for you' — and then a picture in front of the house.”

The governor’s comments offer another glimpse into the personal toll of the Hortmans’ assassination, which also left state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, wounded in a separate attack the same morning.

Walz had considered Hortman his closest governing partner. He served as a pallbearer at her funeral and delivered a eulogy, later telling the Star Tribune that no other relationship in state government matched theirs.

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