Xp Lee, a state employee and former municipal council member of a suburban city north of Minneapolis, was elected on Tuesday to fill the State House seat of Melissa Hortman, a fellow Democrat and former Minnesota House speaker who was assassinated in June, The Associated Press said.
Mr. Lee’s victory in a suburban district where residents predominantly vote for Democrats will return the Minnesota House of Representatives to an even split, with each party controlling 67 seats.
Mr. Lee (whose first name is pronounced like the letters X-P) defeated Ruth Bittner, a real estate agent who has never held public office. She was the only Republican to seek the seat.
Representative Hortman, a veteran legislator who had a reputation for being a skilled negotiator and pragmatist, was speaker of the Minnesota House from 2019 to early 2025. She and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot in their home during the early hours of June 14.
Vance Boelter faces federal and state charges in the killings and in the shootings of a second state lawmaker and his wife, both of whom survived.
Mr. Lee, the son of Hmong refugees who fled Laos during the Vietnam War, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. He works as a health equity strategist at the Minnesota Department of Health and served on the City Council of Brooklyn Park, a suburban city just north of Minneapolis, from 2022 to 2024.
Mr. Lee has called Ms. Hortman a valued neighbor and mentor who left a “legacy of principled leadership and fierce advocacy” for her constituents.
His election could help Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, who has said he intends to convene a special session to consider a package of laws to restrict access to certain weapons.
That effort, which faces long odds in the tightly divided Minnesota Legislature, came in response to the assassination of Ms. Hortman and her husband and to an attack in August on a Catholic church in Minneapolis filled with children. That attack killed two children and wounded 19 other people.
Mr. Lee’s election came a week after Democrats in the State House picked a new leader, Representative Zack Stephenson, a prosecutor who represents Coon Rapids, a suburban district north of Minneapolis. Mr. Stephenson, who has been a legislator since 2019, got his start in politics in 2004 serving as Ms. Hortman’s campaign manager.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
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