Raymond Petersen

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Raymond Petersen

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Candidate, U.S. Senate Minnesota

Elections and appointments
Next election

November 3, 2026

Contact

Raymond Petersen (Republican Party) is running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Minnesota. He declared candidacy for the 2026 election.[source]

Biography

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]

Elections

2026

See also: United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2026

Note: At this time, Ballotpedia is combining all declared candidates for this election into one list under a general election heading. As primary election dates are published, this information will be updated to separate general election candidates from primary candidates as appropriate.

General election

The general election will occur on November 3, 2026.

General election for U.S. Senate Minnesota

The following candidates are running in the general election for U.S. Senate Minnesota on November 3, 2026.


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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Endorsements

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2024

See also: United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2024

General election

General election for U.S. Senate Minnesota

Incumbent Amy Klobuchar defeated Royce White, Rebecca Whiting, and Joyce Lacey in the general election for U.S. Senate Minnesota on November 5, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Amy Klobuchar
Amy Klobuchar (D)
 
56.2
 
1,792,441
Image of Royce White
Royce White (R) Candidate Connection
 
40.5
 
1,291,712
Image of Rebecca Whiting
Rebecca Whiting (L) Candidate Connection
 
1.7
 
55,215
Image of Joyce Lacey
Joyce Lacey (Independence-Alliance Party of Minnesota) Candidate Connection
 
1.5
 
46,377
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.1
 
3,578

Total votes: 3,189,323
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Minnesota

Incumbent Amy Klobuchar defeated Steve Carlson, Ahmad Hassan, Ole Savior, and George Kalberer in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Minnesota on August 13, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Amy Klobuchar
Amy Klobuchar
 
94.3
 
305,055
Image of Steve Carlson
Steve Carlson
 
2.9
 
9,535
Image of Ahmad Hassan
Ahmad Hassan
 
1.5
 
4,891
Image of Ole Savior
Ole Savior
 
0.8
 
2,478
George Kalberer
 
0.5
 
1,578

Total votes: 323,537
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. Senate Minnesota

The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Minnesota on August 13, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Royce White
Royce White Candidate Connection
 
38.5
 
74,814
Joe Fraser
 
29.3
 
56,909
Raymond Petersen
 
8.4
 
16,237
Image of Alycia Gruenhagen
Alycia Gruenhagen Candidate Connection
 
7.7
 
15,017
Image of John Berman
John Berman
 
7.3
 
14,158
Image of Patrick Munro
Patrick Munro
 
4.9
 
9,444
Image of Christopher Seymore
Christopher Seymore
 
2.6
 
5,020
Image of Loner Blue
Loner Blue
 
1.4
 
2,727

Total votes: 194,326
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Endorsements

Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Petersen in this election.

Campaign themes

2026

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Raymond Petersen has not yet completed Ballotpedia's 2026 Candidate Connection survey. Send a message to Raymond Petersen asking him to fill out the survey. If you are Raymond Petersen, click here to fill out Ballotpedia's 2026 Candidate Connection survey.

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You can ask Raymond Petersen to fill out this survey by using the buttons below or emailing ray@rayforsenate.com.

Twitter
Email

2024

Raymond Petersen did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

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]

Campaign finance summary


Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.


Raymond Petersen campaign contribution history
YearOfficeStatusContributionsExpenditures
2026* U.S. Senate MinnesotaCandidacy Declared general$104 $104
2024* U.S. Senate MinnesotaLost primary$3,642 $3,642
Grand total$3,746 $3,746
Sources: OpenSecretsFederal Elections Commission ***This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* Data from this year may not be complete

See also


External links

Footnotes

  1. Ray for Senate, "About the Candidate," accessed August 2, 2024
  2. Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
  3. Raymond Petersen’s campaign website, “Position Outline,” accessed August 2, 2024


Senators
Representatives
District 1
District 2
District 3
District 4
District 5
District 6
Tom Emmer (R)
District 7
District 8
Democratic Party (6)
Republican Party (4)