Doug La Follette
Doug La Follette (born June 6, 1940) is an American academic, environmental scientist, and Democratic politician from Wisconsin. He served as Wisconsin Secretary of State for two terms, from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 2023, totaling 44 years. He is the longest-serving statewide elected official in Wisconsin history and, at the time of his retirement, the longest-serving statewide official in the United States (excluding U.S. senators).
La Follette also served in the Wisconsin State Senate in the early 1970s. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1978 and sought higher office several times, including campaigns for the U.S. House in 1970 and 1996 and the governorship in 2012.
He was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He earned a BA from Marietta College, an MS in chemistry from Stanford University, and a PhD in organic chemistry from Columbia University. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside, did research at UW–Madison, and owned a small business.
As an environmentalist, he helped organize Wisconsin’s first Earth Day in 1970 and co-founded Clean Wisconsin (formerly the Environmental Decade). In March 2023, three months into his eleventh term as secretary of state, he resigned. Governor Tony Evers appointed Sarah Godlewski to succeed him, saying he did not want to spend the next years running an under-resourced office.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:11 (CET).