Zachary Stephenson ’06

Experiential Learning in Action

Zach Stephenson began his time in politics at Knox, running Melissa Hortman's campaign for Minnesota House of Representatives as part of his experiential learning at Knox. After working as an attorney, he was was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018, and, considered a protégé of Hortman. Stephenson recently replaced her as leader of the House Democrats after she and her husband were tragically assassinated in June 2025. 

How are you handling the new position, taking over for someone you were close with and who died so tragically?

It’s been drinking from the firehose these first few weeks since I was elected leader. There’s a lot going on in Minnesota; we had a special election, and there’s been a lot of discussion about a potential special legislative session on gun violence. In addition to the assassination of Melissa and Mark Hortman, we had a school shooting at a church in Minnesota. We’ve been talking a lot about gun violence prevention measures and whether we can get something passed in a special session. Of course, there’s also all of the usual stuff, starting a new job, a lot of things to learn, initiatives I want to start up in our caucus that we’re getting rolling, and of course, we have to plan for the next legislative session and the next campaign, so there’s a lot going on.

Minnesota state politics are about as evenly divided as can be. How do you navigate a state that is so equally divided?

We certainly have partisan differences in Minnesota, but the polarization that has made Washington completely dysfunctional hasn’t completely infected Minnesota politics. The Minnesota legislature could not be more evenly divided. Between the House and Senate, there are 101 Democrats, 100 Republicans, and the House is split 67-67. We must work together to get anything done. We were able to do that this last legislative session, passing a budget for the state of Minnesota without a shutdown. We had divided control as you can have, but we’re still able to get a state budget done, pass a lot of good policies along the way, and do it by working together, listening to each other, and finding a way to get something done.

You had a great example of how to be a leader. What does mentorship mean to you?

I am lucky to have phenomenal mentors in my life—Melissa Hortman is first and foremost, but she’s hardly the only one. Mentorship is about giving people the opportunity to learn and grow, develop new skills, provide advice while letting them figure things out, and putting you in a position to do your own learning. The real gift Melissa gave to me as a mentor was that she always let me know she had complete faith and confidence in my abilities; she never doubted me for one minute.

How did you get your start in politics?

When I was a student at Knox, that’s when my friendship with Melissa began. I met her my senior year in high school, but we really did not become friends until 2004, when I was a sophomore at Knox, then a junior in the fall and I had an idea. I went to New Hampshire to work on the Howard Dean campaign. At that time, I wanted to work on a political campaign as a staffer and was looking ahead to the 2004 election. I thought I could work on a big campaign but I would probably end up just getting people coffee; or I could work on a small one like for a state legislative candidate and say, ‘here’s the deal, we’ll work for you full-time June through November but you have to make me campaign manager, my buddy field director, and my other buddy communications director.’ 

I took it to Melissa because I had met her before. She had lost twice, and if you asked her, she’d say she was crazy enough to try anything, so she agreed. It was five of us in total—all Knox students. We went to Minnesota in the summer of 2004, and worked it out with a couple of professors for independent study. Without Knox College and the support we had from professors all the way up to the Dean to help put the idea together and pursue it, I never would have had that opportunity to build that friendship with Melissa Hortman, and she would not have been elected. 

Melissa won that race by 400 votes; she had lost twice before, and it was a narrow win. Without the five of us working for her, she probably would have lost and never run for office again. She never would have been the most consequential Speaker in Minnesota history; the world of Minnesota politics would look very different but for the fact that Knox College provided the environment where students wanting to do that stuff are supported to do it. The professors encouraged us, supported us, and gave us the ability to get independent study credit; the Dean made it work. I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the reverberations of that over the years.

Do you keep in touch with those four other Knox students from that campaign?

We’re still good friends; one lives in Minnesota, he’s one of my best friends, and we still talk all the time. The other three, I still keep in touch with. One is in California, one in Kansas City, and one in St. Louis. It was an incredible thing, and it’s all because Knox let us do it.

Was politics your focus when you came to Knox?

I was inspired by politics in high school; U.S. Senator (Minnesota) Paul Wellstone inspired me. I went to Knox and did a bunch of political things on campus, both academically and in extracurricular activities. Due to the long winter break, from November through New Year's, I was able to go to New Hampshire and work for Howard Dean. I came back, and a group of us formed a Knox for Dean club. I spent a lot of that January knocking on doors in Iowa. I was infected with the political bug before I got to Knox, but here, I had more opportunities to be politically involved. In the Spring of 2003, when the war in Iraq started, a campus club rented a 16-passenger van, and we all piled into it and drove to Washington D.C. to protest. 

The key takeaway: Knox is a small place, but because it is small, it allows people to chart their own course, and try their own thing. You can have interactions with professors and administrators who allow and encourage you to do crazy things like run a political campaign at 19 years old. I turned 20 in July of 2004, and could take a term off to run a political campaign, and they would help me figure it out. Everyone was uniformly excited and enthusiastic about it at Knox.