Pizza terrorism, online vitriol and now murder: Lawmakers fear for their safety and don’t know how to change that

It was two days after Melissa Hortman was assassinated that state Rep. Erin Koegel felt compelled to flee her home.

“Somebody thought it would be a really funny joke to send a bunch of pizzas to my house,” said Koegel, DFL-Spring Lake Park. “A Domino’s pizza guy pulls into my driveway with two cop cars parked there. So, I went to my mom’s house. No one knows where she lives.”

Police later told Koegel that pizzas kept getting delivered to her residence Monday night. 

“I don’t know why people think they can terrorize us,” Koegel said. 

On June 14, Hortman, the House DFL leader, and her husband, Mark Hortman, were found shot dead in their Brooklyn Park home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were shot in their Champlin home that day but survived. 

Also, Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, and Kristin Bahner, DFL-Maple Grove, each were informed by police that the suspect in the shootings, Vance Boelter, went to their homes on June 14. Boelter faces state and federal murder and stalking charges. 

Related: Minnesota abolished death penalty in 1911, but Vance Boelter’s federal charges mean he could still face it

The slayings have prompted grieving Minnesota lawmakers to discuss their fear of violence. One former lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of continued fear for her and her family’s safety, said that she did not run for reelection precisely because she was afraid of physical harm. 

“For years, many of us were concerned,” she said. “We were just waiting for something bad to happen.”

These worries are backed by national research. A report last year from the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 40% of state lawmakers surveyed were threatened with violence in the last three years. 

At the same time, Hortman’s murder has not led to a barrage of calls for new safety measures. 

Legislators say they are careful about discussing what to shore up, partly for fear of revealing security weaknesses. Afraid their words will be misconstrued and go viral, lawmakers speak in general terms, expecting policy discussions to unfold gradually over time. 

“We’re in a new era here,” said Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-Mankato. “I think the events of the last few days are going to cause people to evaluate and say that while accessibility is a virtue, it’s time to be more safety conscious.”

Here is a look at what has already changed in how state lawmakers are protected, and what else may shift. 

Scrubbing home addresses

Enacted into law in 1973, many provisions of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act “can be described as unclear, complicated and confusing.” 

That is (seriously) the state of Minnesota’s own summation of this law, as can be found on the Minnesota Department of Health website. So, there are gray areas. 

On the day of Hortman’s killing, Steve Simon, secretary of state since 2015 and a former Minnesota House member, made the executive decision that the Data Practices Act does not forbid him from erasing the home addresses of state legislative candidates from the Secretary of State’s website. 

“Our analysis is that it does not require us to put the addresses on the website,” Simon said in an interview. 

But, since the addresses count as public data under the Data Practices law, any individual can still request that information. 

(There are circumstances, such as temporary restraining orders, where a candidate can fill out a form and request their address stay private, Simon noted.) 

Also, some addresses remain available in the Minnesota Legislative Manual, better known as the blue book. That is a biannual who’s who of lawmakers that may include “not only home addresses, but spouses and children’s names and the workplace location of their company,” Simon said. 

There are reasons to keep home addresses public. It lets anyone double-check if someone really lives in the district they run in. In December, a federal judge nullified the election of Curtis Johnson to the Minnesota House after determining Johnson did not reside in the suburban district he won.

But there appears momentum to stop publicizing addresses. Other states, including California and Oregon, let lawmakers not share where they live, according to Shannon Hiller, executive director the Bridging Divides Institute at Princeton University, which studies threats made to lawmakers.

Did I mention scrubbing home addresses?

After the low-hanging fruit of removing home addresses (and personal cell phone numbers, which lawmakers do not have to make public), violence prevention ideas spin into feverish debates over political division, the mental toll of social media, and gun laws. 

One practical limitation is that the state government does not protect lawmakers at their homes, besides encouraging cooperation from local law enforcement. Only the governor and lieutenant governor get security away from the Capitol.

“I don’t think it is practical to provide a security detail for 201 people,” Simon said, referring to the total number of House and Senate legislators. 

Lawmakers interviewed suggested that a State Patrol officer could audit the safety of their homes. 

But most proposals relate to safety at the Capitol (which is not where Hortman was killed). 

Minnesota is one of 11 states to not have metal detectors at their Capitol building, according to a 2021 report by the Council of State Governments. The Land of 10,000 Lakes is one of 19 states to not have X-ray screenings at the Capitol.

(After the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Minnesota’s Capitol did erect a short-lived security fence.) 

The Minnesota Senate Building does not have a metal detector. But the Centennial Building, where House members have offices, does. The Centennial Building security detectors are “kind of a pain in the butt, but it has made the building more secure,” Koegel said. 

Capitol safety falls upon the Capitol Security Division, an arm of the State Patrol mostly consisting of civilian officers and state troopers. 

In turn, Capitol Security works with point people from the House and Senate called the sergeant-at-arms. If a lawmaker fears for their safety, they contact the sergeant-at-arms. 

Capitol Security’s 2025 annual report illustrates its modest budget and aims. 

It noted that Capitol card readers can now decipher encrypted badges and that 43 cameras were “upgraded from the original standard definition IP cameras to full HD with analytics over the past year.”

The report states a vision to “ensure that processes of government remain accessible to all citizens.” 

What about this Capitol gun debate among lawmakers?

There is the larger issue of state gun control laws and their enforcement. But there is also the matter of guns at the Capitol. 

At a 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate forum, Paul Gazelka, a state senator at the time, revealed that he routinely brought his gun to the Capitol. 

“Frankly, I wish I didn’t have to carry at the Capitol,” Gazelka said. “But the fact is I’ve had death threats.” 

Gazelka’s comment focused attention on a 2015 Minnesota law that wiped out restrictions on bringing a gun into the Capitol. The law remains on the books. A DFL-backed bill this year to make possessing a gun in the Capitol a felony went nowhere. 

Related: Why Minnesota lawmakers and members of the public can carry guns almost everywhere at State Capitol complex

Minnesota is one of 16 states to permit guns at the Capitol, according to the Council of State Governments. 

Hiller, at the Bridging Divides Institute, said that other states, such as Virginia, tolerate guns. But, unlike Minnesota, those states reserve the right to ban them for specific occasions, like lobbying days or at a contentious hearing, Hiller said. 

The lawmaker who retired because of safety threats said guns at the Capitol made her fear not just members of the public, but fellow legislators. 

“I never felt safe at work,” she said. “I’ve been screamed at by my colleagues. I once had a male legislator upset about my vote on the House floor. He took me into another room and punched a table and started screaming at me.”

For some, though, those frightening moments demonstrate the need to have a gun. Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, said that he does not bring a gun to the Capitol but knows legislators who do. 

“It’s their lifestyle and what they believe in so more power to them,” Draheim said. 

Instead of restrictions on guns, Draheim would like to see more armed state troopers at the Capitol. But Gov. Tim Walz last week said lawmakers should reconsider allowing firearms in the Capitol. 

And what about political divisions and social media?

“There is a pervasive climate of hostility that creates an environment for violence,” Hiller said. “Security changes have to be hand-in-hand with a broader climate to get rid of vitriol.”

As a reporter wanting to know how the Minnesota state government can reduce the chances that another one of their own will be murdered, Hiller’s response is somewhat maddening. There is no bill a legislature can pass or statute the governor can enforce to end hostility and vitriol. 

But it is also what lawmakers themselves say they want the most. From her interviews with local lawmakers across the country, Hiller noted that security measures like metal detectors cannot take away the visceral anxiety of being anonymously harassed or threatened, whether on email, Facebook, X, at their legislative office, or in their own home. 

That anxiety can make lawmakers retreat from their very calling of serving the public. 

“As evil as people sometimes think we are, the whole reason I got into this is because I wanted to help,” Koegel said. 

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Editor’s note: This story was written by Matthew Blake, MinnPost’s state government reporter. MinnPost reporter Brian Arola contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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