Meet Doug Chapin

Last week, 48,395 Minnesotans went out and voted for Doug Chapin.

In doing so, we didn’t just make Doug the DFL candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s 6th District. Doug received more votes than any non-incumbent DFL candidate in a CD6 primary in the district’s history!!

That’s 48,395 people who decided they want something better.

And now comes the bigger challenge.

Over the next 75 days, hundreds of thousands more voters like you and me across this district will decide who they want representing them in Congress.

We’re going to hear plenty about policies, we’ll see ads, and most definitely will we get mailers.

We’ll hear arguments about Democrats and Republicans, Washington and Donald Trump, Tom Emmer and Doug Chapin.

But before all of that, there’s a simpler question worth answering:

Who is Doug Chapin?

Not the candidate, not the name on the yard sign.

Not the guy standing behind the microphone.

Doug.

Recently, Kelly Springer with Folks of Minnesota sat down with Doug for an in-depth interview about his life, his family, his career and the winding road that eventually brought him to Hanover and, most unexpectedly, a campaign for Congress.

Kelly’s conversation offered something that’s sometimes hard to find in the middle of a political campaign: a chance to meet the person behind it.

And if there is one theme running through Doug’s story, it’s people.

“You’re Really Nice for a Smart Person”

Doug still remembers something somebody told him when he was a sophomore in high school:

“You’re really nice for a smart person.”

Decades later, the compliment has stuck with him. Not simply because of the “smart” part.

Because of the connection.

“Pretty much every job I’ve ever done, spouse, father, everything, I am able to connect with people,” Doug told Kelly.

For Doug, connecting doesn’t just mean being able to talk to someone. It means listening, too.

“I love that not only can I connect and sort of have people hear me, but I can also get the best out of them and hear them as well.”

If you’ve watched this campaign unfold, you’ve probably seen that part of Doug already.

In fact, you could see it just last night.

75+ People. One Packed Room.

On Tuesday night, more than 75 people packed the meeting room at Centennial Library in Circle Pines for Doug’s 15th town hall of the campaign.

There were plenty of new faces, there were plenty of questions, and once again, Doug stood in a room with voters and did something that has become central to this campaign:

He listened.

Fifteen town halls aren’t just campaign events to us. They’re our opportunity to make a choice about how you believe someone should run for public office. You show up. You take the questions. You talk to people who agree with you and people who don’t. And you keep coming back. That’s the whole job folks.

For a candidate who says one of his greatest strengths is connecting with people, there probably isn’t a better way to demonstrate it

But that part of Doug’s story started long before anyone was calling him a congressional candidate.

From Northern Virginia to Hanover

Doug was born at Bethesda Naval Hospital while his father was serving as an officer in the US Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program and grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

He remembers his childhood as pretty typical. He was a strong student, loved baseball, and describes himself as an “enthusiastic athlete, not necessarily a good one.”

Music was another story.

Doug was in band throughout high school and became drum major his senior year. Music has remained part of his life ever since.

He was also the oldest of four children, which meant another important childhood responsibility:

Designated babysitter.

His parents met at Duke University, where they both graduated in 1962. Doug’s mother was outgoing, musical and, as he puts it, “very, very garrulous.” He credits her with at least some of his own gift for gab. His father, a nuclear engineer, was quieter but possessed an ability Doug still carries with him today. He could look at something, understand how it worked and, if it wasn’t working, figure out why.His father had a saying:

“Life is a word problem.”

Doug eventually repeated it so often that his own children got tired of hearing it.

But the philosophy stuck.

When Doug encounters something that doesn’t work, he says he can almost feel his father’s brain kick in. Pull it apart, understand it, figure out what’s broken. Then figure out how to make it work better.

Looking back, that’s a pretty good description of the career Doug eventually built.

The Election Geek

After high school came Princeton University, where Doug studied politics and sang a cappella with the Nassoons.

He jokes that a cappella may have prepared him for politics as much as the actual studying.

“You don’t know politics until you are navigating a group of 20 male Ivy League egos.”

From Princeton, Doug attended Harvard’s Kennedy School and earned a master’s degree in public administration. He went on and worked on campaigns, got married and later attended Georgetown Law at night. And life didn’t exactly stop while he was doing it.

His oldest daughter was born between semesters of his first year and his second daughter arrived while he was studying for the bar. After private practice, Doug spent three years on Capitol Hill with the Senate Rules Committee advising Democrats on election issues. [That’s when his son came along!] Then Doug spent more private practice and more than a decade with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Along the way, Doug started Electionline.org, a daily news source focused not on political campaigns, but on the mechanics of our actual elections themselves.

Doug’s work touched military and overseas voting, online voter registration and efforts with Google and other organizations to make reliable election information easier for voters to find. Eventually, that work brought him here to Minnesota and to the University of Minnesota, helping educate current and future generations of election officials.

For roughly 40 years, Doug has described himself the same way:

An election geek, not a politician.

He cared less about who won than whether the machinery of democracy actually worked. There’s Dad’s influence again. Understand the machine, figure out what’s broken, and make it work better.

Then The Pardons Happened

Doug eventually retired to Minnesota about four years ago. He was ready, as he tells it, to become a “retired election geek.” Hanover isn’t quite the D.C. suburbs (not a bad thing). Doug affectionately describes his adopted hometown as not even a one-stoplight town.

It’s a three-roundabout town.

Situated along the Crow River and split between Wright and Hennepin counties, it was supposed to be home for the next, quieter chapter.

Then January 2025 happened. When President Trump pardoned people convicted of offenses related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Doug thought about friends he had on Capitol Hill whose safety he had feared that day. He couldn’t accept simply moving on. Somebody, he decided, needed to do something. And in Minnesota’s 6th District, Doug eventually decided that somebody was him.

So the retired election geek became a candidate for Congress.

“I’m Determined to Have Fun Doing It”

There is another side of Doug that doesn’t necessarily appear on a résumé.

He’s funny. He dances. Frequently. He loves meeting people.

And despite how seriously he takes the reason he is running, he refuses to treat himself with the same seriousness.

“I’m not doing this for fun, but I’m determined to have fun doing it.”

That might explain why you’ll occasionally see a very well-dressed congressional candidate dancing down a parade route, high-fiving and shaking every hand in site.

Doug describes himself as weird, funny, occasionally boring and comfortable in his own skin. This authenticity has become one of the recognizable features of this campaign. But campaigning has also taught him something more sobering.

The hardest thing isn’t necessarily convincing people that Washington needs to change. A lot of people already believe that.

The harder task is convincing them that change is actually possible.

That’s particularly true here in the 6th District.

For years, we’ve have been told what kind of district this is, who can win here and what outcomes we should simply accept.

This campaign is asking people to imagine something different.

And last week, 48,395 people did.

48,395 Votes. And Now We Build.

That number deserves another look.

48,395. That’s the largest primary vote total ever received by a non-incumbent DFL congressional candidate in the 6th District.

Records are nice but the more important part is what that number represents.

People. Every one of those votes belonged to someone.

Someone in St. Cloud. Someone in Blaine. Someone in Monticello or Delano or Chaska. Someone in a small town, a suburb, on a farm or somewhere in between.

If you know someone who should be following along with our campaign, share our newsletter with them!

And those voters are part of something that has been growing for months.

The people knocking doors, walking parades, making phone calls, putting signs in their yards, the people filling town halls, and the people showing up.

Last night, more than 75 of them packed a library meeting room in Circle Pines.

Last week, 48,395 of them cast a ballot.

Now we have 75 days to keep building.

Tell the Truth. Keep Your Word.

For all the degrees, election expertise and decades spent studying government, Doug’s philosophy about leadership comes down to something considerably simpler.

Tell the truth, keep your word, try to understand how the world looks from someone else’s perspective, and meet people where they are.

Doug connects that idea to servant leadership: leaders eat last.

And then there is perhaps his most unusual piece of advice:

“You have to have an exaggerated sense of your own unimportance.”

We’re all the main character in our own lives, Doug says. But in everybody else’s story? We’re just a bit part. Understanding that changes how we listen to people. It changes how we disagree. And it changes what leadership is supposed to mean.

Maybe that’s worth remembering in a time when our politics so often seems dominated by people desperate to make themselves the main character in everybody else’s story.

Around the District

The calendar may be a little lighter this week, but there are still plenty of ways to help our campaign keep moving!

Knock Some Doors

We have door knocks happening across the district over the next week. Check out the schedule below, find a shift that works for you, and come help us talk directly with voters. There really is no better way to experience what a campaign is all about than hitting the pavement and talking to our neighbors face-to-face.

Pick Up the Phone

Prefer to get your democracy on from the comfort of your own home? Team Chapin is also hosting virtual phone banks Monday, August 24 and Wednesday August 26, both from 5:00pm - 7:00pm.

Each shift starts with a brief training and a script review, no experience is needed. All you’ll need is your phone, laptop/tablet, and a stable internet connection.

Every single conversation we have between now and Election Day will help us reach another voter and keep building this momentum toward November!

For additional information on these events and more going on with our campaign, head over to the Doug Chapin For Congress Mobilize page.

Now You Know Doug a Little Better

There will be plenty of time between now and November to talk about policies.

We’ll talk about healthcare, affordability, education, voting rights, jobs, and democracy.

And what representation of Minnesota’s 6th District should look like.

Those conversations are necessary and need to happen, but elections aren’t only decisions about policies. They’re decisions about people. About judgment, character, experience, and whether the person asking for your vote understands that public office is supposed to be about the people being represented, not the person whose name is on the door.

So now that Doug Chapin’s name is officially headed to the November ballot, we wanted you to know a little more about the person behind it.

The band kid, the baseball fan, the oldest of four, the husband and dad who went to law school at night while raising a growing family. the election geek, the guy who still hears his father’s voice telling him how manage the problems we all face, and the Hanover resident who thought he had retired from all of this.

And yes, the congressional candidate who will absolutely start dancing if you play the right song at a parade.

That’s Doug.

48,395 people have already helped get him this far.

Now let’s introduce him to everyone else.

75 Days until Election Day. We are in the final stretch, and we’re not letting up now.

#Flipthe6th #LFG #ReadyforBetter

About This Week’s Profile

This week’s Rig Roundup draws extensively from an interview with Doug Chapin conducted by Kelly Springer with Folks of Minnesota. Biographical details and quotations attributed to Doug throughout this profile were originally shared during Kelly’s interview.

Kelly’s work gave us something especially valuable at this point in the campaign: an opportunity to introduce voters not simply to Doug Chapin the candidate, but to Doug Chapin the person.

Interview and photography by Kelly Springer & Max Brunner / Folks of Minnesota.

We encourage readers to read Kelly’s original profile and explore more of her and her partner Max’s work highlighting the people and communities of Minnesota with Folks of Minnesota. Be sure to check them out on Instagram as well!

Thanks for reading! Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all things Doug and the campaign!