Manhunt for Suspect in Political Assassination Rattles Minnesota

Ms. Hoffman and her husband, State Senator John A. Hoffman of Minnesota, were wounded by a gunman at their home in Champlin, Minn., on Saturday. Ms. Hoffman and her husband both underwent surgery and remained in the hospital on Saturday. State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed by the same gunman, according to police.

Ms. Hoffman was shot five times and Mr. Hoffman was shot six times, the couple’s nephew, Mat Ollig, wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. Ms. Hoffman “threw herself onto her daughter, using her body as a shield to save her life,” Mr. Ollig wrote.

Ms. Hoffman played an instrumental role in supporting her husband’s political career. For him, that included a stint on the board of the Anoka-Hennepin school district, one of Minnesota’s largest, and serving for more than a decade as a state senator, her friends said.

She had just accompanied Mr. Hoffman to a Democratic Party fund-raiser on Friday night.

Julie Blaha, a former teacher who is the state auditor of Minnesota, said she had taught seventh-grade math to the Hoffmans’ daughter, Hope. She saw firsthand how Ms. Hoffman became an advocate for her daughter, who was born with spina bifida, and how her compassion extended to other vulnerable students.

“Yvette wasn’t going to stop with her daughter,” Ms. Blaha said, noting that Ms. Hoffman and her husband tried to ensure that their daughter had what she needed to succeed. Their daughter, now an adult, has been an advocate for people with disabilities.

The couple supported L.G.B.T.Q. students during a tumultuous time in 2011 when the Anoka-Hennepin School District faced a lawsuit accusing the district of perpetuating a harmful environment for L.G.B.T.Q. students. The district was subject to a 2012 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, requiring it to prevent further instances of discrimination.

Ms. Hoffman and the state senator “did a lot of work behind the scenes to help the school community navigate” the difficult situation, Ms. Blaha said, who was the president of the district’s teachers union at the time.

Her stint as a radio D.J. and co-host of a morning show made her a local celebrity.

State Senator Jim Abeler, a Republican who said he is a close friend of the Hoffmans, said she was “wickedly funny — with a real knack for advertising.”

Still more came from Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania (arson, 2025), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan (kidnapping plot, 2020) and President Trump (two assassination attempts, 2024).

“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” the president said.

And yet the expanding club of survivors of political violence seemed to stand as evidence to the contrary.

In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.

And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.

Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.

Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life.

For months now, Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.

“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”

The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country.

The president himself was the victim of not one but two assassination attempts during his campaign last year, during a speech in Butler, Pa., when a bullet grazed his ear, and two weeks later in Florida, when a man stalked him with a semiautomatic rifle from outside his golf course.

Violent threats against lawmakers hit a record high last year, for the second year in a row. Since the 2020 election, state and local election officials have become targets of violent threats and harassment, as have federal judges, prosecutors and other court officials. As of April, there have been more than 170 incidents of threats and harassment targeting local officials across nearly 40 states this year, according to data gathered for the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

Even in the stretches between acts of actual violence, the air has been thick with violent and menacing political rhetoric.

Over the past five days — in which a senator was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for trying to ask a question of a cabinet secretary at a news conference — a governor was threatened with arrest by the president and with being “tarred and feathered” by the speaker of the House.

And as tanks prepared to roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington in a political display of firepower, the president warned that any protesters there would be met with “heavy force.”

The response to the Minnesota shootings on Saturday followed a familiar pattern. Leaders in both parties issued statements condemning the latest incident and offering the victims their prayers. Then came calls for additional security.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, warned against merely denouncing the shootings and moving on. “Condemning violence while ignoring what fuels it is not enough,” he said. “We must do more to protect one another, our democracy and the values that bind us as Americans.”

Mr. Schumer requested additional security for Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Democrats of Minnesota, as he had earlier in the week for Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, after Mr. Padilla was manhandled and briefly cuffed when he tried to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And Mr. Schumer asked the Senate sergeant-at-arms and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, to convene a full briefing on the security of members of the Senate.

Ms. Klobuchar laid blame for the violence with growing partisanship and disinformation online. Ms. Klobuchar, who was a close friend of Ms. Hortman, the murdered former Minnesota House speaker, urged politicians to re-evaluate their own rhetoric.

“People have just gotten angry and angrier, and they have started to act out what they read online,” Ms. Klobuchar said. “At some point, you got to look in the mirror, when you look at what’s going on here — every single elected official does.”

Political violence has been part of the American story since the founding of the country, often erupting in periods of great change. Four presidents have been killed in office, and another was shot and seriously wounded. Members of Congress have been involved in dozens of brawls, duels and other violent incidents over the centuries.

Today, while most Americans do not support political violence, a growing share have said in surveys that they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman.

Mr. Trump has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to “knock the hell” out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter and defended the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, who clamored to “hang Mike Pence.” One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.

On a day when “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration were taking place across the country, the shooting’s impact already extended into the political realm in practical ways. In Minnesota, where a manhunt was underway for the shooter, law enforcement officials urged people to avoid the protests “out of an abundance of caution.”

And in Austin, Texas, the state police shuttered the State Capitol and surrounding grounds after receiving a credible threat against lawmakers planning to attend protests there Saturday evening.

“One of the goals of political violence is to silence opposition,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies violence and political partisanship. “It’s not just the act against a few people or victims. The idea is that you want to silence more people than you physically harm.”

“What happened today is simply incomprehensible and unimaginable, certainly in the context of Minnesota,” Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota and former mayor of St. Paul, said in an interview on Saturday. He ticked off a list of Republican and Democratic politicians who had reached across the aisle — Hubert Humphrey, Tim Pawlenty and Amy Klobuchar. “It’s a history of people who tried to find common ground.”

Authorities in Minnesota were still trying to capture the 57-year-old man who has been identified as the suspect in the shootings that took place early Saturday in the quiet suburbs of the Twin Cities. But they said that it was a “politically motivated” act of violence, and that the suspect had papers in his car that indicated he may have been planning to target one of the “No Kings” protests taking place in the state or cities across the country on Saturday.

Even as the national political discourse has grown hyperpartisan in recent years, Minnesota has kept a foothold on its own traditions, formed by a long line of politicians who were known for their openness and bipartisanship approach. Some lawmakers, including State Senator John A. Hoffman, a Democrat who was shot in the attacks overnight, still posted their home addresses online. State Representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, was killed in the attacks, along with her husband, Mark, and Mr. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were seriously wounded.

Minnesota, one of only three states with a legislature where control is split between Democrats and Republicans, consistently has higher voter turnout than any other state, with 76 percent of voting-age citizens casting ballots in the 2024 presidential election.

“It’s a state where people are highly engaged,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist who has worked on campaigns in Minnesota. “It has one of the best political press corps in the country because there’s a lot of interest in politics. It’s one of the last states to have a robust caucus system, which requires high levels of grass-roots engagement from both parties. Instead of having primaries, where it’s TV ads and turnout operations, it’s caucus systems where neighbors talk to each other about who the nominee is going to be.”

Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota said on Saturday that she was “shattered” by the news of the shootings, having just seen Ms. Hortman on Friday evening at an annual Democratic Party dinner. Ms. Hortman was respected by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, she said, someone who “had this way of being real with people.”

“It’s that attitude of, ‘I’m not going to spin you, don’t try to spin me,’” she said. “Let’s just talk for real about what we’re trying to get done here.”

Senator Smith said she believed the shootings marked “a very dangerous moment in our country.”

“I think Minnesota is very proud of our civic culture and our belief in the strength of the civic institutions,” she said. “While we certainly have our fights in the Legislature — and I was privy to many of those fights — it never rose to the level of the kind of animosity that we have seen in other parts of the country and Washington, D.C. To see this terrible violence and hatred infecting the political realm in Minnesota is just terrifying to behold.”

Among longtime political observers in Minnesota, there is a deepening sense that the state is changing along with the rest of the country.

While Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, began his political career representing a rural, conservative Congressional district, that career arc seems less imaginable today. The urban-rural divide in Minnesota has become more intense, political strategists said, and the nationalization of party politics has weighed more heavily on voters than local issues.

“I don’t see Minnesota as unique anymore,” said Ryan Dawkins, an assistant professor of political science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., who studies American politics and polarization. “A lot of the unique character of state politics is not gone by any stretch, but it has become much more muted as polarization has increased.”

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican who was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006, pointed to the state’s “nation-leading levels of civic engagement and political civility.”

But he acknowledged that it is no longer the Minnesota it used to be. “While we still cling to it,” he said, “even here it’s slipping away.”

As investigators have tried to piece together what led to the shootings on June 14, details emerged about Mr. Boelter, a father of five who had worked for decades in the food industry. In a video he posted online, he described quitting that industry to work on agricultural projects in central Africa.

More recently, colleagues said, he had picked up jobs at funeral service companies — including removing dead bodies from houses and nursing homes — to pay the bills. Mr. Boelter and his wife were also doomsday preppers, according to an affidavit unsealed on Friday.

Here’s what we know about the suspect.

Does he have a connection to the victims?

Mr. Boelter had served on a state economic board with one of the victims, State Senator John A. Hoffman, who survived the shooting, though it is unclear if they actually knew each other.

Mr. Boelter was appointed to the panel, the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board, in 2016 by a Democratic former governor, Mark Dayton. The board has 41 members appointed by the governor, and its members try to improve business development in the state. He was later reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat.

Mr. Boelter and Mr. Hoffman attended a virtual meeting together in 2022 for a discussion about the job market in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from the meeting show, though officials said they did not know if the two had any kind of relationship.

Current and former members of the board said that there were a handful of meetings each year and that there was often no direct interaction with the governor. One said the governor had not attended any of the group’s meetings in her four years on the board. They said it would be easy for two members not to know each other.

What are his political affiliations?

Governor Walz has said that the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination,” though the exact motive for the attack is not yet clear.

Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota, and a state report connected to the work force board listed Mr. Boelter’s affiliation as “none or other” in 2016. A similar report in 2020 listed him as having “no party preference.”

But David Carlson, a roommate and close friend of Mr. Boelter’s, said Mr. Boelter voted for Donald J. Trump last year and was particularly passionate about opposing abortion.

Mr. Carlson said he had known Mr. Boelter since fourth grade. He said that he knew that Mr. Boelter owned guns but that he had never heard him speak about either of the two lawmakers who were shot. Recently, he said, Mr. Boelter had been experiencing financial and mental health challenges. He “just gave up on life for some reason,” he said.

Mr. Carlson read aloud a text message from Mr. Boelter that he received on the morning of the attack, in which Mr. Boelter wrote that he might “be dead shortly.” The message did not describe any details of the attacks, Mr. Carlson said. It went on: “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”

Mr. Carlson said that on June 13, Mr. Boelter gave him four months’ worth of advance rent payments — about $220 a month — for a small room in the shared house. Mr. Boelter also thanked his roommates for their friendship and then said that he needed some rest, Mr. Carlson said, so he left him alone.

Mr. Boelter’s lack of a party affiliation on public documents does not necessarily mean that he is not interested in the country’s political affairs.

In November 2018, Mr. Boelter urged his followers on LinkedIn to vote in that year’s election, saying he had been to countries where people could not elect their leaders and that they were “not places that anyone of us would want to live in.”

“I think the election is going to have more of an impact on the direction of our country than probably any election we have been apart of, or will be apart of for years to come,” he wrote.

The lawmaker who was killed in the attacks, State Representative Melissa Hortman, ran successfully for re-election that year.

He was a doomsday prepper, according to investigators.

In an affidavit unsealed on Friday, Terry Getsch of the F.B.I. said that Mr. Boelter and his wife, Jenny, were “preppers,” or people who believe a calamity is imminent and prepare for its arrival. Mr. Getsch said that Mr. Boelter had left instructions for a “bailout plan” that involved traveling to his mother-in-law’s home in Spring Brook, Wis., in the event of “exigent circumstances.”

Mr. Boelter texted his wife and children hours after the attack stating “something to the effect of they should prepare for war,” Mr. Getsch wrote. His texts also said that the family needed to leave the house and that “people with guns may be showing up,” the affidavit said.

Ms. Boelter was stopped on the morning of the attack by police officers near a convenience store in Onamia, Minn., roughly 70 miles north of the area of the shootings, according to Sheriff Kyle Burton of Mille Lacs County. Ms. Boelter has not been charged with any crimes.

He worked in the funeral industry and preached in central Africa.

Mr. Boelter’s professional history is varied.

In one video he posted online, seemingly for an educational course, Mr. Boelter said he worked six days a week for two funeral service companies in the Minneapolis area. At one of the companies, he said, he sometimes helped to remove bodies from crime scenes and would work with police officers and death investigators.

A spokesman for Des Moines Area Community College, in Iowa, said Mr. Boelter took classes in the school’s mortuary science program, which is primarily an online program, in 2023 and 2024.

State reports and his LinkedIn profile indicate that he had also been the general manager of a 7-Eleven in Minneapolis and, before that, the general manager of a gas station in St. Paul. A report in 2017 listed him as an executive at an energy company.

More recently, he said on LinkedIn that he was the chief executive of a company called Red Lion Group, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose website lists a vague mission of creating “good jobs for local people.”

Mr. Boelter has delivered several sermons at a church in that country.

In the sermons, which were posted online, he said he gave his life to Jesus as a teenager and had been blessed with five children. In one, he said he had been friends with David Emerson, a missionary who was murdered in Zimbabwe in 1987 along with 10 others.

In another sermon, he appeared to criticize gay and transgender people.

“There’s people, especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are,” he said. “They don’t know their sexual orientation, they’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”

Mr. Boelter was enrolled at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas from 1988 until 1990, when he graduated with a diploma in “practical theology in leadership and pastoral,” according to a statement from the school, which said the school had not had any contact with him since that time.

The school offers programs and certificates for students interested in evangelical ministry and missionary work. The institute, which is not accredited, is rooted in the Pentecostal tradition; its students seek to learn directly from the Holy Spirit as they study the Bible.

Mr. Boelter and his wife were listed on a website as running a private security company, though it was not clear whether it had any clients. The company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, lists Mr. Boelter as the director of security patrols and his wife as the president.

The firm’s website describes using Ford Explorer S.U.V.s, “the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use.”

On June 14, the police towed a Ford Explorer from outside the home of Representative Hortman.

The website for Mr. Boelter’s security company makes expansive claims about his work experience that could not immediately be verified, including that he had been “involved with security situations” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Federal tax forms show that Mr. Boelter and his wife once led a Christian nonprofit called Revoformation Ministries. An archived version of the group’s website described Mr. Boelter as becoming an ordained minister in 1993.

Mr. Boelter, the site said, had traveled to violent areas and had “sought out militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.”

Mr. Boelter made similar claims during one of his sermons in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying he had been confronted by armed militants while distributing pamphlets in places like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

How was the attack carried out?

Authorities say the assassin disguised himself as a police officer — wearing a ballistic vest, gloves and a mask — before going to the lawmakers’ homes in two Minneapolis suburbs in the early hours of June 14.

After the police responded to the home of Senator Hoffman, finding that he and his wife, Yvette, had both been shot, they decided to check on Representative Hortman at home. There, they encountered the assailant, who they said fled on foot after an exchange of gunfire with officers around 3:30 a.m. Inside, the police found Ms. Hortman and her husband, Mark, dead.

After the attacks, Mr. Boelter emptied his bank account, withdrawing $2,200, Mr. Getsch wrote in the affidavit.

U.S. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, said in an interview that the gunman had a notebook with a list of names that included hers and those of other lawmakers, all of whom were Democrats.

The list included about 70 potential targets, a federal law enforcement official said, including doctors, community and business leaders, and locations for Planned Parenthood and other health care centers. Some of the targets were in neighboring states.

A sweeping manhunt led the police on June 15 to Sibley County, a rural community southwest of Minneapolis, where they found what they believed was Mr. Boelter’s vehicle near Green Isle — roughly 10 minutes from his listed address. Later that day, officials said that Mr. Boelter had been taken into custody.

What has the investigation found?

During the manhunt that led to Mr. Boelter’s arrest, law enforcement officials obtained search warrants to gather evidence from two homes where he split his time, vehicles registered to his name, bank accounts, a storage unit and a cellphone messaging app.

While searching Mr. Boelter’s primary residence in Green Isle, investigators found a notecard with the names of public officials, at least 47 firearms and more than $17,900 in cash, according to an inventory of items found during the search, detailed in a court document.

At a storage unit in Minneapolis where Mr. Boelter kept belongings, investigators found gun cases, gun cleaning supplies and several body bags, according to a search warrant return. Mr. Boelter in recent months had worked for a funeral home, where his duties included transporting bodies.

Reporting was contributed by Julie Bosman, Elizabeth Dias, Kevin Draper, Adam Goldman, Dan Haugen, Ernesto Londoño, Ruth Maclean, Alyce McFadden, Bernard Mokam, Pooja Salhotra, Jay Senter and Mitch Smith. Jack Begg and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

An assailant impersonating a police officer shot the couple inside their home in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. That gunman also wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in a separate shooting on Saturday. Gov. Tim Walz called the shootings a “politically motivated attack.”

As the husband of one of the most powerful figures in a narrowly divided state, Mr. Hortman was well-known among friends for his sense of humor and interests that included billiards, baseball and mountain biking.

A native of Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Hortman graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, which also say that he obtained an M.B.A. from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Hortman had been working as a program manager at nVent Electric, a global electrical manufacturing company, when he died.

“You couldn’t have had a more enthusiastic campaign spouse,” said Julie Blaha, the state auditor of Minnesota and a close friend of the Hortman family. “Not only was he an absolute rock for Melissa, he would do anything he needed to do.”

Ms. Blaha said she saw the Hortmans on Friday evening during a Democratic Party fund-raiser. Mr. Hortman often accompanied his wife on the campaign trail and had a competitive drive that made him an asset. He would often try to outdo her competition, said Ms. Blaha, pointing to the slightly larger yard signs he ordered to outdo his wife’s challengers’ signs.

Ross Bennett, a close friend who lived in the Hortmans’ neighborhood, recalled playing poker and pool with Mr. Hortman, whom he said he has known for over a decade. On a recent Saturday afternoon, Mr. Hortman called him up to offer his help assembling a new outdoor grill.

“Just out of the blue, he came over and did that,” Mr. Bennett said. “He had a lot of ingenuity.”

The Hortmans leave behind two adult children, a son and daughter.

Ms. Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed by a gunman who also shot and wounded Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes on Saturday morning.

Among the safeguards that Ms. Hortman helped put in place were laws to keep guns out of the hands of people in crisis and to require stronger background checks for more gun purchases.

“Minnesota is a state with strong gun laws because of the leadership of Governor Walz as well as former Speaker Melissa Hortman,” said Emma Brown, the executive director of Giffords, a gun control advocacy group founded by former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, also a victim of gun violence.

Ms. Hortman “was critical to getting those bills moving and growing their support within the Legislature,” Ms. Brown said.

Ms. Giffords was the target of an assassination attempt in 2011 that left her seriously injured, and she has been an outspoken voice against gun violence in the years since. She and Ms. Hortman worked closely to get the gun control legislation passed in Minnesota, Ms. Brown said.

On Saturday, Ms. Giffords described Ms. Hortman in a social media post as “a true public servant who dedicated her life building a better, safer Minnesota.” She also shared a photograph of the two women clasping hands.

Everytown for Gun Safety, another gun control advocacy group, ranks Minnesota’s gun safety laws as the 14th strongest in the nation, partly because of the 2023 legislative package.

John Feinblatt, the group’s president, described Ms. Hortman’s legacy as “one of fearless courage, stronger communities and lifesaving progress” in a statement on Saturday.

Among the changes included in the 2023 bill was the implementation a “red-flag law” that aimed to prevent people in crisis — at risk of harming themselves or others — from possessing guns. Under the law, family members and law enforcement officials can ask courts to issue protective orders barring a person from buying firearms and taking away any that they already own. The measure went into effect at the start of 2024.

Another measure tightened background-check requirements for gun owners in the state. Under that law, people who obtain guns in private transactions must pass a background check, though hunting rifles and transfers between close family members are exempted. Federal law requires major gun dealers to run background checks, and an older Minnesota law mandates that smaller sellers do the same.

Minnesota has also prohibited people convicted of certain violent crimes, including domestic violence, gang violence, stalking and fourth-degree burglary, from possessing guns for three years after their conviction. The state requires people to apply for a permit to carry a gun in public.

Last year, a federal appeals court blocked the state from raising the age requirement for carrying handguns in public to 21 from 18.

While the motive for the shootings was still unknown, officials shared some information about the events surrounding the attacks, like the quick thinking of a police sergeant that led officers to a scene where they engaged in a shootout with an assailant.

Here’s how the attack unfolded early on Saturday:

At around 2 a.m., officers from the Champlin Police Department responded to a report of a shooting at a home in Champlin, a city in the Minneapolis suburbs. There they found State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, injured with gunshot wounds. Emergency responders provided first aid on the scene and the two were rushed to the hospital, where they underwent surgeries. They survived the attack and remained under medical care on Saturday.

Officers from Brooklyn Park, Minn., another nearby suburb that is about 10 miles away, assisted in the emergency response to the senator’s home, and a sergeant from that department became concerned after discovering that one of the victims was a politician.

“In hearing that, that very intuitive sergeant asked our officers to go check on Melissa Hortman’s home, the representative that lives in our community,” said Chief Mark Bruley of the Brooklyn Park Police Department.

Two Brooklyn Park officers drove to Ms. Hortman’s home at around 3:30 a.m., and when they pulled up at her street they were met with a strange sight: A police vehicle, or what appeared to be one, was already there, parked in the driveway with its emergency lights on.

As the officers approached, a person who looked like a police officer — dressed in a blue shirt and pants, donning what looked like a protective vest, carrying a Taser and wearing a badge — was at the door and walking out of the house.

When confronted by the officers, the person immediately opened fire. The police fired back and the person “retreated into Melissa’s home,” Chief Bruley said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether anyone had been shot in the confrontation.

Officers moved to the entrance of the house and found her husband, Mark Hortman, on the ground, who “clearly had been struck by gunfire,” Chief Bruley said. They took a few steps inside the home, dragged Mr. Hortman out and tried to offer first aid. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

More officers were called to the scene and they surrounded the house. A SWAT team arrived and sent a drone into the house, which helped them find the body of Ms. Hortman inside.

The person who confronted them escaped on foot, officers said, and officials began a “large scale” manhunt on Saturday. Chief Bruley said that the shooter’s vehicle contained a manifesto and a target list with names of people including the two lawmakers who were shot.

Officers said that they had “people of interest” who they were looking for, and that they had detained and questioned several people, but no one was in custody by early Saturday afternoon.

Organizers of the protests said that they were canceling all of the planned events in Minnesota after a recommendation to do so from Gov. Tim Walz and other officials.

Several thousand people had gathered outside of the State Capitol in St. Paul by early Saturday afternoon, about 25 miles from the shootings.

Governor Walz said that people should “not attend any political rallies” in the state until the suspect was taken into custody.

The police said that the suspect had a list of targets and that both of the state lawmakers who were shot were on the list.

The gunman impersonated a police officer, the authorities said, and shot State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, around 2 a.m., the police said. Officers then found the gunman about an hour and a half later at the home of State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, whom he had fatally shot. The gunman fired at officers when they arrived and was able to escape. The Hoffmans are being treated at a hospital.

Bernard Mokam and Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting.

State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times in an earlier attack by the same assailant. Mr. Hoffman and his wife remained alive on Saturday morning. A search is underway for the gunman, who officials said was impersonating a police officer when he carried out his attacks.

Both state lawmakers who were shot served critical roles in the Minnesota Legislature as members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which functions as the state’s Democratic Party. Ms. Hortman served as speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives for a six-year period that ended this year, and she led her party’s push to retain power during the chaotic start to the session. Mr. Hoffman, a fourth-term state senator, chairs the Senate Human Services Committee.

Before the shooting, Democrats and Republicans each held 67 seats in the lower chamber. Gov. Tim Walz could call a special election to fill Ms. Hortman’s position. Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the Senate.

After last November’s election, Democrats and Republicans were tied for control of the lower chamber. But when a judge determined that one of the newly elected Democrats had not met the residency requirements to run for his seat, Republicans won a narrow majority and sought to capitalize on it.

Minnesota Republicans used their temporary narrow majority to push several contentious bills, including one that would bar transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports and another that would limit the governor’s emergency powers. Those bills failed to pass but inflamed partisan tensions.

That majority was short-lived because a Democrat won a special election for the newly vacant seat in March. Ms. Hortman had said in January that her members intended to stay away from the capital, holding off any business until Democrats regained the seat.

House Democrats refused to show up in the State Capitol on opening day, but Republicans unilaterally continued business, choosing Representative Lisa Demuth as their House leader. House Democrats called the move outrageous and filed a lawsuit, asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to bar Republicans from conducting business.

The chaotic start to the session underscored the challenges that Mr. Walz, a Democrat, faced on his return to Minnesota after he spent part of last year campaigning to be vice president.

Without full control of the Legislature — which they had held the previous two years — Democrats faced significant challenges in passing their priorities. The Minnesota Senate was also closely divided.

Lawmakers failed to pass a balanced budget when the session ended in May, leading Mr. Walz to call a special session.

Lawmakers passed a $66 billion budget after a daylong special session, averting a partial government shutdown that would have begun in July.