Dan Wolter was sworn in to serve on the Lakeville City Council on January 17, 2023. No stranger to public service, he has served on the staffs of three governors in two states, represented northern Dakota County on the Metropolitan Council, chaired the Burnsville Planning Commission, led the State Legislature's efforts to recruit Regents for the University of Minnesota, and led Lakeville's "Cultivate a Sense of Community" task force.
A native of Bremer County, Iowa, Dan Wolter is the youngest of seven children born to L.K. "Swede" and Lois Wolter, who were small business pioneers in the convenience store industry that took shape in rural Iowa in the 1970s and 80s. Dan's first job was dressing up as "Twinkie the Kid" for his family's store grand openings. It was there he learned the value of both hard work and entrepreneurialism. In the mid-1980s, his family sold their business to LaCrosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip, the company's first large scale acquisition and their first foray into the state of Iowa.
Dan attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he graduated with a degree in political science. After multiple internships in the office of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, Dan was hired to work on the Governor's 1994 re-election campaign, which featured Branstad winning a bruising primary election versus then-Congressman Fred Grandy, who played "Gopher" on the 1980's hit television series, "The Love Boat". Dan went on to work in the Governor's Office, serving as Branstad's speechwriter and a policy liaison.
In 2000, Dan moved to the Twin Cities to work for public relations firm Weber Shandwick, before being hired at the Minnesota House of Representatives as a top aide for then-Speaker of the House Steve Sviggum and Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty. When Pawlenty was elected Governor of Minnesota in 2002, Dan was his first Communications Director, serving the first two years of the Pawlenty Administration. In that role, he oversaw messaging and public relations for the Governor and was a top advisor during some of the most challenging budget times in state history and in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. In 2004, Dan joined Pawlenty and the leadership of the Minnesota National Guard on a trip to Kosovo to see peace-keeping efforts being led by the Minnesota-based 34th "Red Bull" Infantry Division.
Upon leaving the Governor's Office, Dan went to work as director of the University of Minnesota News Service, where he managed all public relations and communications for President Robert Bruininks, the Board of Regents, and the central administration of the U. While there, he oversaw the public relations campaign around building the new on-campus football stadium (formerly TCF Bank Stadium) and led the U's first social media efforts at the beginning of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. He and his team won a 2009 Midwest Regional Emmy for a video production with a university physics professor that was, at the time, the highest watched YouTube video ever done by a university.
In 2005, Gov. Pawlenty appointed Dan to a vacant seat on the Metropolitan Council, representing most of northern Dakota County, including Burnsville, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, and South Saint Paul. Reappointed in 2007, he served in that role until the end of the Pawlenty Administration in 2011. He was a member of the Met Council that approved all of the region's 2030 comprehensive plans and he also was intricately involved in environmental issues, including the creation of the Council's innovative "inflow and infiltration" program to eliminate stormwater from going into the wastewater treatment system.
After Dan moved to Burnsville in the mid-2010s, he was appointed to the city's planning commission and was twice elected by his peers as chair. A number of significant projects were approved in Burnsville during that time, including the final buildout of its Heart of the City program, an expansion of the police station, the addition of numerous innovative multi-use developments, and the beginning stages of a major cleanup of Burnsville's older landfills along the Minnesota River.
Dan briefly moved back to Des Moines, Iowa, after being asked to serve Gov. Kim Reynolds as a senior advisor. In that role, he also served as the Governor's public liaison in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, Dan was hired by Hy-Vee, Inc. to serve as their government relations director for several states, including Minnesota. And that is when he moved to Lakeville. He was appointed to the city's Finance Committee and later to the "Cultivate a Sense of Community" task force. In 2023, when a vacancy arose on the City Council, Dan applied for the position and was appointed to the role on January 17, 2023.
An avid animal lover, Dan lives in the Oak Shore neighborhood of northern Lakeville with his two English Bulldogs, Lizzo and Drake, and two cats, Ramsey and Spicer.
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