Raymond Petersen

Raymond Petersen was born in Stillwater, Minnesota. He attended Stillwater Senior High School. Petersen served in the US Navy as an engineer. His career experience involves designing life safety system and driving trucks. [1]

State Senate

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U.S. Senate

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Campaign website

Petersen’s campaign website stated the following:

Position Outline

Every decision I make will be based primarily on how it will restore and strengthen the peoples rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Simplify Candidacy laws for Small Dollar Campaign Common Citizens to run for office. This process has shown me just how complicated (and thereby how expensive) our government has made it for a non-politician to run for office to serve his fellow citizens. There can be little wonder why special interest groups and their money now control our elected officials.

Term limits. I do not believe that an elected official can make the difficult decisions needed for the country while at the same time trying to convince those they represent to reelect them. I also do not believe that future generations should be forced to live under laws made by the previous generations. If elected, I will only serve one term in the US Senate. I propose a constitutional amendment to set term limits as follows:

House of Representatives, Three 2 year terms, Must wait 2 years to run for a different office.

Senate, one 6 year term, Must wait 2 years to run for a different office.

President, one 4 year term, Must wait 2 years to run for a different office.

Vice President, one 4 year term, eligible to run for President immediately, Must wait 2 years to run for a different office.

Supreme Court Justices, one 25 year term.

Laws passed by congress expire 25 years from passage.

Supreme Court. I propose a constitutional amendment that:

The Supreme Court will be made up of one Justice representing and chosen from each of the Circuit courts.

Removes nominations to the Supreme Court from the President and transfers that responsibility to the circuit courts presenting a slate of candidates for the Senate to consider.

Balanced Budget except during times of national emergency as declared by 2/3 of the states.

Eliminating Income Taxes for the lowest income half of households by:

Increasing the standard deduction to the median income and eliminating all personal deductions and credits.

Eliminate the current filing categories of Single, Married, Married filing Separately and Head of Household and establishing Household per Capita (Total household income divided by number of members within household) and allowing households to determine who these members are.

Establish a mechanism whereby crime victims or their families have a means to hold the Justice Department civilly liable for further crimes committed by individuals that were inadequately prosecuted for previous crimes.

Restore the purpose of the 10th amendment, beginning with the elimination of the US Department of Education and restoration of full authority and responsibility for education of the public to the individual states and their citizens. Additionally, repeal of the 17th amendment. Our current senators have forgotten that they are elected by the citizens of Minnesota to represent the state of Minnesota, not their political parties in the federal government.

We have seen significant violations of the 1st amendment directly or by coercion of the government over the past five years. Everything from establishing religion (Environmentalism, Social justice “initiatives”, etc.) by the government, attacks on private individuals rights to their own religious beliefs, restricting free speech either by legislating approved speech, conspiring with social media to block speech that is disagreeable and even prosecuting citizens for trying to exercise their right to peaceably petition the government for a redress of grievances. As Senator, nothing will be more important than upholding individual rights to include not allowing major social media and internet companies to continue to hide behind their status as private companies to continue blocking lawful speech that they disagree with.

The 2nd amendment was not written to allow people to carry guns or have guns for personal protection or hunting. Those things were so obvious that they didn’t need to be specified. The 2nd amendment is entirely about the people being able to be a check against the same type of tyrannical government that the founders had just fought to be free from. Our current president has made clear that we already have too many gun laws on the books to stop him from using the military against the people if he so desires. We need “common sense” gun laws that return the power to remain free to the people.

We need Senators that understand that abortion laws need to based on science and compassion, not religion. Children need to be protected and cared for from the moment that they have developed to the point of having self awareness. This point is somewhere between conception and birth, and I currently believe occurs near the end of the first trimester. Any argument to prevent an abortion for any reason before this point or to allow an abortion for any reason other than saving the life of the mother after this point is based in religious beliefs and in violation of the 1st amendment’s prohibition of the government establishing a religion. [2]

—Raymond Petersen’s campaign website (2024)[3]