At least two attorneys named Frank Chapman live in northwest Wyoming. One is running for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat as a MAGA conservative, and the other says he’s “far from conservative, madam.”
A major political group conflated the two Wednesday.
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) advertised a speech by the congressional candidate and younger of the two men. It touted his conservative ideology alongside some of the other, older man’s major life accomplishments.
Frank H. Chapman, the 58-year-old U.S. House candidate who declared his run Wednesday, operates a ranch in Moran, Wyoming. He has ties to Boca Raton, Florida, where he ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2012 and 2015.
Frank R. Chapman, 75, was appointed Wyoming’s first state public defender in 1978, served a brief stint in the state House of Representatives a short while later.
The congressional candidate Frank H. Chapman would have been about 10 years old at that time.
The elder Chapman emphasized in a Thursday interview that he couldn’t run for Congress right now because he doesn’t fit the two-party system:
As a Republican, he’d risk violating his congressional oath of office to serve “some senile narcissist,” and “the Democrats couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel,” he said.
But the elder Frank Chapman got a chuckle out of CPAC confusing him with the MAGA candidate who lives a half hour north of him, he said in a phone interview.
CPAC’s Wednesday post advertised the congressional candidate as a “confirmed speaker” for the CPAC USA 2026 event in Grapevine, Texas this week.
Tickets to those event packages range from $45 to $30,000.
“Frank Chapman is a Wyoming rancher and serves as the President of Heart 6 Ranch in Moran,” the post began.
That’s accurate with respect to the younger Frank Chapman running for Congress.
“His professional experience is distinguished by a historic legal career, including his appointment as Wyoming’s first State Public Defender in 1978 and his service as a Member of the Wyoming House of Representatives,” the post adds.
“That’s me,” the elder Frank Chapman told Cowboy State Daily.
The post continued: “He specializes in high-stakes litigation involving personal injury and criminal defense.”
“That’s me,” the elder Frank Chapman said again, adding a caveat: “I would never call it ‘high-stakes.’ That’s not my wording.”
The post says CPAC’s confirmed speaker is a “leading voice for private property rights and the preservation of the ranching lifestyle in Teton County.”
“That could be both of us,” said the elder Frank R. Chapman.
“As of 2026,” the post acclaimed, “he has emerged as a significant conservative influence through his advocacy on ‘corner crossing laws.’”
“That’s not me,” the elder said. “I am far from conservative, madam.”
The younger Frank H. Chapman called the elder Frank R. Chapman on Wednesday and explained that people might confuse them as he declared for Congress, the elder said.
A playful idea struck Frank R: “I might sign up as a Democrat then, just to keep people confused.”
But nowadays, said Frank R, he identifies most as an “Al Simpson Republican,” said Chapman, referencing the anti-MAGA, pro-choice, late U.S. Senator and attorney from Wyoming.
He used to co-host the television show "Report to Wyoming" on K2 TV alongside Dallas Laird - a conservative attorney who in Frank R's view, would make a fine U.S. House representative.
CPAC did not return an email request for comment by publication.
The younger Frank Chapman did not return voicemail and email requests for comment by publication.
And Then There Were Seven
The younger Frank Chapman declared his House run Wednesday, saying he will run as a conservative aligned with the America First movement and “President Donald Trump’s fight to Make America Great Again,” reads a statement the ChapmanforCongress domain sent Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily.
He’s the seventh Republican to join the race, after Casper businessman Reid Rasner, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, Casper veterans David Giralt and Kevin Christensen and state Senate President Bo Biteman.
The primary election is Aug. 18.
Chapman is the registered agent for the Heart Six Ranch near Moran.
“First and foremost, I am conservative, I am America First, and I am MAGA,” Chapman said in the statement. “But above all, I’m a cowboy who believes Wyoming must always come first.”
Chapman said he decided to run after years of dealing directly with federal agencies through his business and legal career, the statement relates, adding that Chapman has firsthand experience with regulations affecting ranchers, outfitters, and small businesses.
Chapman said his campaign will focus on supporting Wyoming’s energy industry, protecting grazing and land-use rights, and limiting federal regulatory authority.
He criticized what he described as decisions by federal agencies and courts that have restricted energy development and economic activity in the state, and said his campaign theme reflects his record and approach to public service.
“When we fight, we win," his statement says.
Headlines
Frank H. Chapman is no stranger to news headlines.
In his 2015 run for Boca Raton, Florida, City Council, he labeled himself a businessman and retired attorney.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel ran a story eight days before that March 10, 2015, city council election, describing a federal judge’s 2013 ruling leveling a $44,000 fine against Chapman’s Cleveland-based law firm. That fine stemmed from how the firm managed federally-held foreclosed homes, and a foreclosure fix-up program.
The firm had falsified routine inspection reports with the intent to deceive the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, says the order, which Cowboy State Daily has reviewed.
Such disputes with the federal agency and fines “happe(n) very often in government contracts,” Frank H. Chapman told the Sentinel, adding that the scope of the contract increased unexpectedly because of the housing meltdown nearly 10 years prior.
The Boca Magazine also chimed in days before the election. It led a Chapman investigative feature with the sentence, “Frank Chapman influenced the Boca Raton City Council election even before he became a candidate.”
The story says Chapman commissioned two mailers attacking the business record of a man who’d filed papers in November 2014 for the seat Chapman later sought, and that candidate dropped out of the race.
In Chapman’s view, the magazine reported, the judge who fined his firm thought that “we had been compensated enough” in the federal contract and wrote the ruling in a way that disadvantaged his appeal.
The magazine reported, and Cowboy State Daily has confirmed, that the Ohio Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness reviewed a civil action the Ohio Attorney General had waged against Chapman, his father, and others, which ended with a consent dismissal.
Chapman admitted he’d worked for his father’s carpet and upholstery cleaning business periodically between 1983 and 1991, and he learned about, typed and taught new employees how to over-quote job prices and offer “illusory discounts,” the Ohio Supreme Court’s recounting of that case says.
Under the plan, technicians routinely dry-cleaned fabrics that did not require drycleaning to increase the contract price, the business paid for Chapman’s law school tuition, and he transferred motor vehicles used in the business and titled in his name to fictitious corporations, the document says.
The Ohio Supreme Court continued, saying the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness found Chapman’s 1992 conversion "from his previous pattern of highly questionable ethical and outright illegal behavior… too recent to be convincing."
His application was denied, but he was admitted to the bar later, in 1996. He is now marked “inactive” with the Ohio State Bar.
The Florida Bar shows Frank H. Chapman as a member in good standing: home address in Moran, cellphone area code of Florida. He was admitted to the Florida bar in 1998.
Regarding the work for his father’s company, Chapman told Boca Magazine that he was young and, “You don’t know anything is deceptive when you grow up in it.”
The Ohio Board of Tax Appeals issued a 2004 decision against Chapman when he challenged a ruling that he’d failed to pay about $27,000 in taxes on a yacht.
Chapman had said he paid taxes on the yacht through a boat dealer in New York, and it had never entered Ohio, but had stayed in Florida since he bought it.
The board cast Chapman’s evidence as inadequate or raised too late, deferred to the tax commissioner’s findings as “presumptively valid,” and denied his appeal, says the decision.
Update - As this story went to publication, an eighth U.S. House candidate, former state Rep. John Romero Martinez, also declared his candidacy.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
