MANKATO – June 14, 2025 will be a day that rests in the mind of many Minnesotans. It was the day that a gunman broke into the home of Rep. Melissa Hortman, killing her and her husband after shooting and injuring Sen. John Hoffman and his wife earlier in the day.
In the days and weeks that followed, leaders across the state gathered to answer one question: How can we stop this?
“How do we respond to political violence? Because this was not something we were good at. This is not something we had to deal with,” Shannon Watson said.
Watson is the founder and executive director of Majority in the Middle, an organization aimed at bringing people together to bring civility and equip people for good civic engagement. Next Tuesday Watson, along with a number of different partners in the area, will host a signing for a “civic pledge for a stronger Minnesota.” She hopes it will be the first step in answering that important question.
“(It’s) an opportunity for people to come together … and publicly commit to denouncing political violence and to working on finding common ground and standing firm against rhetoric that leads to violence,” Watson said.
Watson founded Majority in the Middle in 2020 after seeing a rash of reports saying that partners shouldn’t marry across political lines; something she experienced firsthand growing up.
“My dad is a Republican … and my mom is a Democrat and so this idea that you can’t really be in a relationship with somebody if you don’t vote the same way, that’s sort of completely foreign to me, because I literally learned bipartisanship at the dinner table every day in my life; and my parents, they just celebrated 55 years of marriage,” Watson said.
The mission of Majority in the Middle – to bring people together to temper political violence – resonates with Andy Wilke, executive vice president at Greater Mankato Growth.
“I think that the middle is kind of where most folks are. … Most folks are just going about their lives or trying to feed their families and get involved and support their communities,” Wilke said.
Watson’s work with Majority in the Middle is what first drew Wilke to her years ago. Since then, the two have worked together, with Wilke and Watson speaking highly of one another.
“My friend Shannon has put together this effort and I really want to commend her on that,” Wilke said.
“Andy Wilke has been an outstanding local partner for us. … He’s amazing,” Watson said.
And together the two will be meeting prior to the civic pledge signing to present the results of the third annual State of Bipartisanship report, which focuses on the representatives who spend the most, and the least, time reaching across the aisle.
“We want them to work together, to find solutions to big problems that are facing the greater Mankato community, our state and the country as a whole. So we expect our leaders to work together and find common ground and we’re going to hold them accountable to that as well,” Wilke said.
Wilke says an event like this is more impactful than ever, happening less than one week following the killing of political activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
“It was tragic to hear of the murder of Charlie Kirk, he was a very influential figure in our public discourse and what happened was a tragedy, and many of us are still processing those events, and I think it just renews the importance of this effort that we are going through,” Wilke said.
“The event that we have next week is really timely in that effort.”
Wilke and Watson will present the State of Bipartisanship report next Tuesday at 10 a.m. in the second floor training room at Bridge Plaza, which is the same place the civic pledge signing will happen later that day at noon. Watson is asking anyone interested in coming to RSVP at www.whatwecandoweek.org/pledge.