Clay County Commissioner Paul Krabbenhoft.Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Getting To Know the Commission: This is the first in a series of Extra profiles of members of the Clay County Commission.
Paul Krabbenhoft had spent decades in public life when he was elected to the Clay County Commission 12 months ago. Active for 37 years in soil and water conservation and a member of city and county planning boards, he’d spent much of his life involved with local, county and state government.
Yet joining the five-member board that governs county affairs brought surprises. “I’ve been involved in business all my life,” he says. “Now I’m learning so much about a side of the world I’d never seen … the whole intermingled complexity of what government is involved with.”
A lifelong Clay County resident, Krabbenhoft was raised a few miles south of Moorhead. As a young man fresh out of college with a finance degree, he started out farming before turning to real estate. Since 1990, he has worked in real estate, teaming up with several major developers; he now focuses on home sales with Berkshire Hathaway.
When he joined the commission last January, the new member was assigned to health and human services. Each member has a portfolio of county and public concerns on which they focus. For him, that’s health and human services. “It’s about food, housing, mental health, foster care, child protection, substance abuse, early childhood development – in many cases, working with people who have the lowest income and the greatest needs,” he explains.
He serves on the executive board of the Lakes and Prairies Community Action Program, along with several others. “I’m in awe of all they do,” he says. “It’s been an education for me.”
Yet his involvement also spans a much broader range of concerns, among them the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Economic Development Corporation, city and county planning and zoning groups, MetroCOG (the Metropolitan Council of Governments) and the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, some 35 in all. “I might start the day with a 7:30 meeting with millionaires, then by 8:30 be at the Family Service Center talking about children’s mental health.” He estimates that county business, including all those meetings, occupies 30 to 35 hours of his schedule every week.
Though last year’s county commission election marked his entry into elective public service, it wasn’t Paul’s first time on the ballot. Starting in 1985, he had been elected to the five-member Clay County Soil and Water Conservation District board for nine consecutive four-year terms. “I never had to campaign,” he says with a smile. “I ran unopposed, down at the bottom of the ballot.”
The Soil and Water District, established back in the Dirty ’30s, promotes stewardship of the land, educating landowners and finding incentives and grants to help farmers follow the best practices for minimizing erosion and maintaining clean water. “My head will always be with the environment,” he adds. Though he resigned from the board after joining the commission, he continues to closely follow its work.
Tapped for leadership long ago by the Minnesota Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Krabbenhoft rose through its ranks, ultimately taking on the presidency in 2020. The crowning moment, so to speak, would have been presiding over his final convention in 2022. It was not to be. One week before the state gathering, he came down with a bad case of Covid-18 at the Clay County convention. Instead of gaveling the state meeting to order, he had to stay home in bed.
Krabbenhoft became involved in the local and national home builders associations between 2000 and 2008, when he was a partner with John Adams in Dakota Development, a firm that at one time built 100 homes a year. As a non-builder associate member, he was a director on the Minnesota Realtors Board and its government affairs committee and was a delegate to the National Association of Home Builders.
Paul and his wife Carol are passionate about other interests, too. Carol works with Growing Together, the F-M gardening collective, and with Farm in the Dell in Moorhead. While she digs, plants and harvests, her husband spends his free time in a different sort of physical pursuit – running and, now, competing in triathlons.
“I took up running when I was 50 at our daughter Dawn’s urging,” the 69-year-old reports. “I ran 14 marathons during my 50s, starting with Grandma’s in Duluth in 2015. I ran in Boston, Austin, three times in Chicago – and then my back broke down.”
Two surgeries later, he’s again up and active. Now his event of choice is the triathlon. After spending the winter learning to swim laps, he plunged into three such events last summer, competing at the sprint level. “That involves a half mile of swimming, 18 miles on a bicycle and a 5K run at the end,” he notes. He’s hoping to move up to the Olympic level – in which each segment is doubled – in 2024.
And then there’s skiing. “I’ve skied since I was 7,” he says. “I just love that deep powder snow.” He and Carol make two or three trips a year to Montana for downhill skiing. Earlier this year, Dawn treated her dad to a helicopter ski trip in the northern Rockies if British Columbia, a once-in-a-lifetime experience he calls “my happy place.”
The Krabbenhofts have two daughters and five grandchildren. Dawn Stapleton is a general surgeon in Chaska, Minnesota. Laura Berman, who lives in Westfield, New Jersey, is an architectural designer for Rutgers University and its three vast campuses.
After a lifetime of working with public bodies, have there been surprises since Paul turned his attention to the Clay County Commission? Oh, yes, starting with the rigors of the campaign.
“I’d always run unopposed for the water district. This was completely different – one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” he admits. “Because of its nonpartisan nature, you’re completely on your own out there, with no political organization to back you up.”
He invested four nights a week from June through early November knocking on doors in District 1, the only one of the county’s electoral subdivisions entirely within Moorhead’s city limits. Over that span, he estimates he talked with at least 800 residents at their front doors about his platform: Meeting service needs during these inflationary times, business growth and job creation; maintaining roads; supporting the Resource Recovery Center, detox facility and flood protection; and meeting the treatment needs of children and adults with mental health and substance use concerns.
Now, he says, “It’s almost a full-time job. I’m doing naybe one-third of the real estate volume I did in the past. But I’m learning so much about a world I’d never fully seen before.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do all my life. Finally, the time is right.”