Meet Paul

I was an Eagle Scout in Troop 265 in the Viking Council. I enjoyed spending summers at Manypoint Scout Camp in Northern Minnesota.

I have lived in Minnesota my whole life and dedicated my adult life to service to the common good. My mother was a public school teacher and my father was a Lutheran pastor. Since those early years, my life has been dedicated to public service and bringing people together to find innovative, community-based solutions.

Growing up in small congregations across Minnesota, I realized early on that it takes all members of a community for it to work well and thrive. In strong communities, all people are whole and essential people. Marginalizing and dividing are never the answer to building strong and resilient communities.

After high school, I served for two years as an AmeriCorps member with Pillsbury United Communities in the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood of Minneapolis. I served as a tutor and mentor to youth in afterschool programs.

In 2007, I started working for Rep. Paul Marquart and the House of Representatives Property Tax Relief and Local Sales Taxes Committee and the bi-partisan Government Redesign Caucus.  We fought to strengthen the state and local fiscal relationship and to be more responsive to the needs of Minnesotans across the state.

When Mark Dayton was elected governor, I went to work in his administration, where I fought to ensure that Minnesotans were being treated fairly under the law. I worked on transformative tax fairness laws that asked the richest 2% of Minnesotans to pay closer to their fair share in taxes and reinvest those revenues so Minnesotans could afford their lives. I worked to increase tax credits for working families and eliminate unfair tax breaks for foreign operating corporations.  Later, I collaborated with the Board of Water and Soil Resources to develop proposals aimed at improving water quality across the state.