Minnesota House of Representatives District 32A candidate surveys, 2022

Elections in Minnesota, 2022

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This article shows responses from candidates in the 2022 election for Minnesota House of Representatives District 32A who completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey.

• Click here to see candidates and election results.
• Click here to see Candidate Connection survey responses.

Candidates and election results

General election

General election for Minnesota House of Representatives District 32A

Incumbent Nolan West defeated Ashton Ramsammy in the general election for Minnesota House of Representatives District 32A on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Nolan West (R)	57.3	11,067
		Ashton Ramsammy (D)	42.7	8,247
		Other/Write-in votes	0.1	16

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 19,330
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey responses

Ballotpedia asks all federal, state, and local candidates to complete a survey and share what motivates them on political and personal levels. The section below shows responses from candidates in this race who completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Survey responses from candidates in this race

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Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Ashton Ramsammy (D)

Fixing Our Infrastructure: 

Ashton (like most of our residents) has waited years for something to be done about Highway 65. There are serious repercussions for inaction, such as more accidents, injuries, and fatalities, heavier traffic leading to higher carbon emissions, furthering the climate crisis, and the moving of businesses out of Blaine due to traffic congestion straining the supply chain. 

Ashton’s promise for getting Highway 65 rebuilt consists of working with other State Legislators, all of our City Councils that are on 65, and the MNDOT Commissioner to secure state and federal funding from the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Plan in order to have construction immediately following his election.

Mental Health Reform: The lack of mental health support for high school students in the state of Minnesota is unacceptable. Minnesota has the third worst student to counselor ratio in the country. Counselors are there to help students achieve their career goals, promote academic achievement, and provide short-term emotional support. They are unable to perform this job if they continue to be overwhelmed by a lack of resources available to them. 

Ashton believes that in order to lower the cost of medical expenses and reduce the number of youth suicides and mental health crises each year, we must provide a network of mental health resources to students and our communities that will help bring equitable access for all.

Public Safety:
 Ashton has had the wonderful opportunity of shadowing at the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office and from there he learned the many complex issues around the rise in certain crimes across our cities. In our cities, the biggest concern around public safety has been street racing and DWIs. Blaine alone has seen a 300% increase in street racing which has been very dangerous for our residents, with recent fatalities due to people driving at unreasonable speeds in our neighborhoods. Ashton believes that in order to help solve our public safety issues we need to support our police by ensuring that our police have enough funding, pay, and training to ensure that they can work their best to keep our communities safe.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Ashton Ramsammy (D)

I am personally passionate about mental health, homelessness/poverty prevention, and Infrastructure. Mental health reform is something that is very close and personal to me. Over the last few years our student community has suffered multiple suicides and accidental deaths that have torn apart friends, families, and our community. I strongly believe that we need to act quickly on the mental health crisis to help many of our communities that are hurting from the lack of resources and for hundreds of people who are waiting months to get an appointment because of the lack of an efficient provider system. Homelessness and poverty prevention is another area of policy that I am personally passionate about because of homelessness can affect anyone. In Anoka County, Blaine is the largest city and has one of the highest homelessness rates amongst the youth, elderly, and veterans. We cannot keep ignoring the issues of our city and let our community and our citizens fall through the cracks, we have to make sure that we are helping our homeless by identifying and providing some resources to help them get where they want to be. Infrastructure is something that I am personally passionate about because frankly, when I was 16 years old, if I dared leave past 7am then I would be stuck in traffic for 1 hour+ every morning on highway 65. And over the last 6 years, nothing has changed or been fixed. We need to ensure that funding is secured as soon as possible and I will make sure that it happens

See also

More about these elections:

• Minnesota House of Representatives elections, 2022

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