Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan flouted the law by failing to hold quarterly meetings on lawmakers’ safety before the assassination of state House Speaker Melissa Hortman, prompting harsh backlash from colleagues in the legislature for the “shameful” oversight.
Flanagan, who is now running for US Senate to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), only held around half of the required meetings of the Minnesota Advisory Committee on Capitol Area Security over the last five years.
Ignoring the state-mandated briefings on security for lawmakers has now drawn fire from Republicans in the Minnesota legislature — and could prove a stumbling block to Flanagan as she seeks higher office.
“The Advisory Committee on Capitol Area Security is designed to ensure that legislators, visitors, and staff at the Capitol are kept as safe as possible, but we can’t fulfill that duty if the chair refuses to actually call meetings as required by law,” Minnesota House GOP Whip Jim Nash told The Post.
“It’s incredibly irresponsible, and frankly just confusing, that the elected official who chairs the committee and has her office within the Capitol complex, refuses to take the responsibility of this group seriously,” Nash said.
“There are a lot of conversations to be had and decisions to be made, especially this year, and the fact that she has kept this committee on the back burner for years is shameful.”
Flanagan won re-election with Walz in 2022, but the governor is now seeking a third term. She is currently double-digit percentage points ahead of Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the other major declared candidate in the primary race, in one early poll, though an internal Democratic survey found Craig would do two points better in the general election against a GOP candidate.
From 2019 to 2024, the advisory panel met just 13 times even though Minnesota law mandates that the committee “shall meet quarterly,” according to its annual reports, meaning at least 24 meetings should have been convened by Flanagan, who serves as its chair.
None of the meetings held before 2023 have detailed information available online, and just two — one in 2023 and one in 2024 — have their minutes publicly available. Only one of the reports arrived before its Jan. 15 deadline, according to KTTC, which first reported on the issues.
So far in 2025, five meetings have been held.
Asked earlier this year about not holding the safety meetings, Flanagan declined to elaborate but said: “We take this very seriously and that’s how we’re going to move forward.”
“We have continued to put out reports and you know all I can say is that going forward, we will make sure that we’re meeting with greater frequency,” she added.
Minnesota legislators renewed calls for the safety meetings after Hortman and her husband were fatally shot by alleged assassin Vance Boelter at their home in Brooklyn Park in the early hours of the morning on June 14.
Boelter, 57, has also been charged with shooting state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their Champlin home hours before allegedly killing Hortman.
The couple miraculously survived despite the suspect, who was wearing a mask and dressed as a police officer, firing 17 shots: nine at the senator and eight at his wife.
A letter left behind in an SUV reportedly claimed Boelter allegedly received secret US military training and had been asked by Walz to carry out the murders and also kill Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) so the 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate could run for her seat.
Though the lawmaker security advisory committee has drawn the most scrutiny, it’s not the only committee Flanagan runs that has run afoul of its quarterly mandated meetings.
The Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness (MICH) has also failed to hold at least four meetings per year since Flanagan took office in January 2019, notching 15 of its required 24 meetings by the end of 2024.
It’s unclear if that may have prevented another crisis involving security at the state Capitol building in St. Paul, when a naked mentally ill man wandered easily into the legislature and fell asleep in the state Senate president’s chair late one Friday in July.
“The individual made statements indicating a belief that he was the Governor, among other remarks, and was found disrobed,” the chief House sergeant-at-arms, Lori Hodapp, told lawmakers in an email later, according to the Associated Press.
Court records revealed that the man, Dominic Terell Peace, 36, who was later charged with burglary, was wanted in Wisconsin for violating the terms of his probation on other charges and a warrant was filed for his extradition, according to KSTP.
Reps for Flanagan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
