Excelsior’s Dillon and Eden Prairie’s Ramsdell spar to enter the ring against Paulsen and Madia
By John Molene
With the conventions unfolding and the November general election looming ever larger in voters’ minds, two political newcomers are vying to represent the Independence Party in the state’s Third Congressional District race.
Businessmen David Dillon of Excelsior and Steev Ramsdell of Eden Prairie – both 52 years old – are competing for the right to join the hotly contested general election battle in the fall against DFL candidate Ashwin Madia and Republican Erik Paulsen.
Third District voters will decide in the Sept. 9 primary election whether to advance Dillon or Ramsdell into the fray. Dillon has garnered the Independence Party’s endorsement for the primary. Ramsdell said he’s hoping to use this election cycle mostly to get his feet wet for future campaigns.
While Paulsen and Madia are traditional major party candidates with large followings and war-chests, Dillon and Ramsdell have more modest goals and resources. Both congressional candidates have pet issues. For Dillon it’s the economy. For Ramsdell it’s health care.
Dillon was raised a Democrat, became a Republican as a young man, but then determined his socially liberal, economically conservative viewpoints fit better as an Independent. He said his political evolution was a gradual one.
“It started a few years ago when I started looking at the world through my children’s eyes,” Dillon said. “That’s really what it was. I grew up as a Democrat in a very DFL family. Then I went to (the University of Minnesota and studied economics and found it was impossible to support large government, the trial lawyers and the teachers’ unions. There was no way to keep doing that.”
But if Dillon soured on the Democrats early, he did the same with the Republican Party more recently, mainly because of what he saw as years of fiscal irresponsibility. That left the Independence Party as a middle ground.
Politicians, partisan politics and dominant special interests are to blame for many of the country’s ills, Dillon said, and a new, centrist course is what’s needed.
“I just felt it was time to put up or shut up,” he said of his decision to enter the race for the Third District seat being vacated by Jim Ramstad, a politician who Dillon says he greatly admires.
As for Ramsdell, he’s using this election cycle perhaps more as a trial balloon than a serious campaign.
“To be honest, my chances of winning – this time around – are slim, to say the least,” said Ramsdell on his Web site (www.ramsdell4congress.com). “For one thing, I do not have the financial resources to be competitive with the big money candidates.”
David Dillon
While Dillon has never held elected office, he is no stranger to politics. His father, Gerry, ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Minneapolis in 1957, and his family was good friends with longtime U.S. Rep. and Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser.
He served as co-chair of the 2007 Hennepin County Library Technology Task Force, as a past board member of the Lupus Foundation and has been a member of the Citizens League and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.
Dillon runs the family business of The Meyers Printing Companies of Brooklyn Park. He and his wife, Kathy, have three children. The family has lived in the district for 20 years, first in Bloomington and now in the Excelsior area.
Fiscal reform – notably deficit and debt reduction – drives many of the things Dillon would like to achieve. Prominent on his Web site is a graphic showing an ever increasing national debt.
His other favored positions include:
* clean, abundant and inexpensive energy
* reducing health care costs and universal health care coverage
* world class elementary and secondary education.
* a fair and enforced immigration policy
* a long-term policy to achieve reduced military costs
* A swift conclusion to our combat involvement in Iraq, with a commitment to support the democratic Iraqi government.
* telling the truth about and reforming Social Security and Medicare.
Dillon thinks the wide-open race, the changing political demographics of the Third District, and an unsatisfied feeling by the public about Congress in general, suits his positions.
“It’s the only house seat in Minnesota that’s in play,” he said. “And the Third Congressional district is as purple as they come. And never before in the history of polling has there been a single digit approval rate (for Congress). Facts like that make a good case for a competing independent.”
For more information on Dillon, see his web site at www.dillonforcongress.org
Steev Ramsdell
Ramsdell describes himself as “Just a regular guy – not a lawyer, not a politician. A business owner that will represent the individual, not the special interests.”
An Eden Prairie resident since 2005, Ramsdell operates three massage therapy centers – dubbed PowerNap Sleep Centers, San Mei Rejuvenation Centers and Planet Shikoku Super Rejuvenation Centers -- one center each in downtown and uptown Minneapolis and a third at the intersection of Mitchell and Valley View roads in Eden Prairie.
He also says, that if elected, he will “not waste time running for re-election. I will spend all of my time doing the job of representing you.”
Ramsdell is married with a step daughter.
A native of Florida, Ramsdell was a political science major while an undergraduate at the University of Miami. He also served as campaign manager for his father’s unsuccessful bid to become sheriff of Broward Country, and also ran for a state senate seat.
“I always run on principles,” Ramsdell said. “I don’t seek contributions or endorsements. I pay my own way. What I believe is people should participate in their government in any way that they can. It is supposed to be government of the people, by the people and for the people. It’s my civic duty to raise the questions.”
Ramsdell’s No. 1 issue, and the only one he has articulated on his Web site, is health care.
“First and foremost, bring attention to the need to drastically improve our ‘healthcare’ system, particularly through finding cures for illnesses and diseases, not just ongoing, never-ending, research,” Ramsdell noted. “We should not have only more medications, more pills, more treatments. We should have cures. It is time. It is possible. It is due. And, making it happen is up to me and to you!”
Ramsdell favors a stop to financial support of a broad range of organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, until cures are found.
“It’s tough love,” he agrees. “But this is the time of the miracle marvel.”
Ramsdell also favors a flat tax rate of no more than 10 percent, simplifying the tax code, term limits and a zero-based budget.
Ramsdell admits he’s unlikely to garner enough votes this election for a victory.
“There will be another election in two years, so this gets the ball started. By then we’ll have the funding and have the word out. This is not a one-time shot.”