A lot has happened in eight years.

Minnesota has experienced some of the worst.

I am a candidate because I am tired of the bought and paid for politicians that are rapidly destroying Minnesota through tyrannical policies, destruction of American families, punishment of those that work and follow the rules and reward of those that don’t;

People that believe that they are the ordained elites with all the answers;

People that are politicians for the power over others, rather than to serve others;

People that are only concerned about riding the current popular outrage to their next term in office;

People that can only cooperate with each other after they themselves have caused some disaster.

I fear for my children and grandchildren’s futures in what has been my families home state for generations.

I want someone that I can vote for, rather than against.

I am a candidate because I am one of you. Someone that works everyday to improve the lives of not just myself, but my family and community. Unlike the career politicians that are trying to buy votes with yet another new government program, I feel the same frustration that you do with a declining quality of life from the ever increasing taxes they are taking from us to pay for it.

I would also like to encourage and motivate other like minded “common citizens” to volunteer a small portion of their lives to serving as a representative of their community. I, myself, will not serve more than two terms (6 years) through the next redistricting cycle, and will not actively campaign for the second term. I believe that if you do the job properly, you won’t have to explain why you need another chance.

I do not take private donations, I do not take public subsidies. I am not using my campaign to practice spending other peoples money.

If you want to know what motivates a candidate, look at who’s paying for their campaign.

What is most frustrating to me is the number of people I meet that simply have no knowledge of how things really work. They don’t understand the government. They don’t understand the economy. They don’t understand just how lucky they are to be living in the United States. They don’t actually think through anything. They simply repeat what they heard from someone else that also doesn’t know anything. Maybe I can be successful if I can just get a few more people to start thinking. If I can just give them a nudge toward calling bullshit on whomever does get elected.

To that end, I am going to lay out my positions, opinions and thoughts about the issues we are facing through my campaign. Many of these pages are going to be very simplified for the intended audience. If you find yourself saying or thinking, “yeah, but it’s not that simple,” you are probably right. We have a lot of very highly educated politicians, lawyers, business people, etc. that have done a very good job of complicating everything. At the same time we have stopped educating most of our population, so they just give up trying to understand and vote for whomever they are told to. The fact is that everything is built on a few simple concepts that everyone can understand.

I don’t claim to be an expert at anything. I don’t believe in experts. Anyone that tells you to just accept that they are an expert at something is a fraud or an idiot. These are my views as a result of my experiences to date. I reserve the right to modify my statements as I learn new things, but I will always be open for honest debate. I will try to provide an explanation when I update something. I hope that people will take this information and build on it through further inquiry through other sources. Never take one persons views as absolute facts. Everyone comes from different experiences and has differing views. That’s why we have a government of made up of many people rather than just one.

Other than myself with some volunteer help from family members and input from followers, I do not have a campaign staff. If you wish to help the campaign or just know of someone that needs help starting to think for themselves, please forward a link to this website rayforsenate.com.

Thank you for your support,

Raymond Petersen

It’s time to return to citizen legislators as intended at our founding.