MEDIA INFORMATION ABOUT FEW ARE CHOSEN: A CAMPAIGN MEMOIR AND AUTHOR DOUG MCFARLAND

For immediate release

September 22, 2008

DOUG MCFARLAND INTRODUCES MINNESOTA CAMPAIGN MEMOIR AT NATIONAL CONVENTION

Doug McFarland introduced his recently-published Few Are Chosen: A Campaign Memoir to delegates at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in early September. The book tells the story of a campaign for the U. S. Senate with insight and self-deprecating good humor.

McFarland said the book is sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious, and always true to life. People who say they want honest answers from a politician will find them. While the story tells of a Minnesota campaign, the story is really one of American campaigning. Endless evenings on the telephone in the basement. Flying low over a forest in a one-engine plane and hearing a stall warning. Scrapping for a single vote. Plugging along with a knotted back, upset stomach, and aching teeth. Seizing on small omens. Always hoping against hope.

This is a book of stories and wisdom from the campaign trail. Beginning with the powerful story of telling his dying father he was running for Senate, McFarland goes on to brighter, amusing stories that will bring a smile to readers. What was that name again? Listen my children and you will hear of a midnight ride to the Icebox of the Nation. Maintaining mystique while rubbing my hands on your silverware. No martini for that answer. Un-impressing the press. Was traitor there?

The author says he’s a Republican, but this is not a political advocacy book about partisan positions. His Democratic faculty colleagues were hooting and cheering listening to the story of disaster at the Edina Rotary Club about what really goes through the mind of a candidate while stumbling through answers to unexpected questions.

McFarland stated that after introducing the book in September, he is now proceeding to promote it in Minnesota and beyond. During the campaign, one national publication called him "a dynamo on the stump." He hopes to employ that speaking ability at media appearances and book signings across the state.

For more information:

Doug McFarland

Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, MN 55104

651-523-2085

Doug McFarland is in his thirty-fifth year of law teaching at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. During 2007-08, he was a visiting professor at Phoenix School of Law in Phoenix, AZ. Students have voted him Professor of the Year five times, most recently in 2007.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Macalester College and as a Root-Tilden Scholar at New York University School of Law, he began his law career at Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis. After three years, he moved to law teaching in 1974. A decade later, he achieved a doctorate in speech-communication from the University of Minnesota. While teaching at Hamline, McFarland has also served as an Assistant to the President at the University of Minnesota, and as Administrative Assistant (chief of staff) to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger at the Supreme Court of the United States from 1984 to 1986.

From late 1992 until 1994, he campaigned as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota. Despite a win in the straw ballot at the 1993 state convention, the campaign was in the end unsuccessful.

In addition to Few Are Chosen: A Campaign Memoir, McFarland is the author of many law books and articles. The fourth edition of Minnesota Civil Practice, a multi-volume treatise is also published in 2008, by Lexis Law Publishing. He also has a book in the fifth edition published by Thomson/West. He has articles in various legal periodicals, including Harvard Law Review and local bar journals, plus newspapers and magazines. A more complete listing of publications can be found on his page under the faculty tab at www.hamline.edu/law.

Over the years, he has been a referee (judge) in Hennepin County Conciliation Court for 30 years, an arbitrator in various types of disputes, a member of the Education Appeal Board of the U. S. Department of Education, president of a little league, and a deacon in the Lutheran church.

He was born in 1946. Doug and Mary McFarland were married in 1973. They have four grown children: Amy in Plymouth, MN; Stuart in Los Angeles, CA; Kathryn in Minneapolis, MN; and Wesley in St. Paul, MN.

              Prologue I

1 Why Are You Running? 1

2 Getting to Know You . . . Getting to Hope You Like Me 6

3 You Need Professional Help 17

4 Politics by Retail 26

5 Thirty Days Hath Convention Season 38

6 Are You Sure That Wasn’t a Stall Warning? 52

7 Some Months Are Longer Than Others 68

8 Remind Me Again of My Profoundly Held Beliefs 78

9 No Martini for You 91

10 The District Where Politicians’ Cars Go To Die 103

11 The High-Water Mark 122

12 Where’s the Payoff? 134

13 Dress for Success 143

14 You Wanted to See a Sign from God? 156

15 Take This Hospitality Suite and Shove It 176

16 The Winter of Discontent 190

17 Just Can’t Wait to Get On the Road Again 205

18 The Big Mistake 228

19 Dead Politician Walking 248

20 The Last Hurrahs 263

21 That’s All, Folks 272

              Epilogue 277

Few Are Chosen: A Campaign Memoir can be placed into several genres. They are biography, humor, Minnesota, and politics.