What Melissa Hortman means to Maryland

Americans may yet get to know Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota state representative who was slain last week alongside her husband in a barbarous attack from a man who apparently loathed her politics. That’s if the news media can pause long enough in these tumultuous times to offer retrospectives about her estimable life and career.

What Marylanders need to know is that there are 188 Melissa Hortmans in our state legislature – and countless more serving in local political offices.

By that I mean there are scores of policymakers throughout Maryland who are living in our neighborhoods, lifting up their constituents and doing their best, whether you agree all the time with their politics or not, to improve our communities.

Which is what makes Hortman’s murder, and the grave wounding of another Democratic legislator, John Hoffman, so tragic and scary.

By all accounts, Hortman was a well-respected – even a beloved – figure in the Minnesota statehouse and in her district. She’s been called a compassionate lawmaker and a brilliant legislative tactician. She was a multifaceted woman of action with a strong moral compass and a tremendous sense of humor, and she seemed to know everyone and everything going on in her community. These are admirable qualities that we can see in many of our state lawmakers and local officials as well.

What do they do now?

Statewide officeholders, the mayor of Baltimore, executives of the biggest counties, and certain key members of Congress get police protection – all of the time, most of the time, or some of the time, depending on the offices and the circumstances. But members of the Maryland General Assembly – with the exception of the presiding officers – do not.

State lawmakers are out there in our communities; you may run into them at a neighborhood picnic or parade, at the grocery store, at your kids’ school, or anywhere else “real people” congregate.

Which, as the tragic events of this weekend show, makes these elected officials very vulnerable.

Marylanders celebrate their citizen legislature. Except in extraordinary circumstances, lawmakers meet for three months in Annapolis and then return to their lives and their jobs and hometowns. The system is designed to keep legislators focused when they’re in session and grounded and in close touch with their communities the rest of the year.

I’d argue that the state is reaching the point where it might be better-served by a full-time legislature, with vastly bigger staffs. That would lessen the influence of powerful special interests and their savvy and plugged-in lobbyists, who hold great sway over policy debates in Annapolis and often blunt the priorities of regular Marylanders.

But that’s a conversation for another day. Only 10 states currently have full-time legislatures.

National pundits have described Hortman’s assassination as a blow to democracy, another reminder that some Americans have become hostile to the concept of civil discourse and disagreeing agreeably with political opponents. But it’s also a blow for democracy because it will inevitably mean less access for everyday citizens to their political leaders.

I remember the pre-9/11 days when security at the Maryland State House was so loose that you get could to within 20 feet of the governor’s office before a cop would even ask you who you were. Now, only two of the five entrances to the building are open to the public, and unless you have certain ID cards you have to go through magnetometers to get into the State House and every other building in the legislative complex.

It’s easy enough, after the violence in Minnesota, to imagine even greater restrictions on access to legislative buildings and official proceedings in the days ahead. And, understandably, how anxious will elected officials be to hold public events in their communities? How equipped are law enforcement agencies around our state to adequately secure all the public meetings that take place on a regular basis?

These are the times we live in: The U.S. Capitol Police, which monitors “concerning statements or direct threats” to members of Congress, logged almost 9,500 cases in 2024. That compares to 3,900 cases in 2017. It’s pretty safe to assume that the same trend holds at the state and local levels in Maryland and elsewhere.

Hours after Hortman’s death, all the Democrats and all the Republicans in Minnesota’s congressional delegation released a joint statement mourning her loss, decrying the violence and urging more civility in the body politic. The fact that something so decent and obvious seemed so unusual in our current era was really depressing.

I’m as cynical about politics and politicians as the next person. But there are times when our political leaders deserve some grace.

Whenever I moderate a candidate forum I try to remind the audience of how difficult it is to run for office and how many personal sacrifices an individual has to make to become a candidate. I ask audience members, regardless of who they’re supporting, to give a round of applause to the candidates just for putting themselves out there and being willing to enter the political fray.

We need more good people, not fewer, participating in the political process. If personal safety and the safety of one’s family now becomes part of the calculation for deciding whether to run for office, then surely we will have fewer good people stepping forward than we did before. And that is just another tragic result of this weekend’s shootings in Minnesota.