Max Rymer’s background as an entrepreneur and now a small business owner with 5 employees gives him a firm grasp of the economic impacts of legislative decisions.

Max grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and has found a permanent home with his wife, Elsie, in Minnesota. Elsie is a Superior, Wisconsin native, and danced professionally at Duluth’s Minnesota Ballet for four years before they met in college.  They are expecting their first child in February 2017.

After graduation from Bay Port High School in Wisconsin, Max chose to move to Minnesota to attend the University of Northwestern – Saint Paul where he earned a Marketing Degree.  He also became Student Body President, won awards for stage and screen performance, and learned what it meant to be a servant leader. While in college he  interned as a Legislative Aide for Pam Myhra, District 40A. He formed the “Eagles Vote” Campaign at Northwestern during the national election and assisting on campus for Kurt Bills’ senate run.

Max spent a year – as many college graduates do – finding what career would suite him best. He spent four months doing door-to-door residential sales for CenturyLink (which prepared him for door-knocking during this election season) and eventually found a home in both sales and digital marketing. He taught himself different coding languages and eventually formed his own digital marketing and web development firm – Digital Alchemy – while also leading the Business Development department of a software company called DS6.

He’s in the process of creating an online Sales Platform called “BirdDog”.

Max is a co-founder of the Edina Foundation, distributing need-based scholarships to local Edina High Schoolers.

He was recently elected to serve as a precinct chair for Edina 13. 

Max believes that conservative, common-sense principles win in an arena of ideas. Timeless pillars like lower taxes and limited government drive every political platform he’s running on. More and more, we see partisan lines disappearing. As Minnesotans and people nationally realize how dire our economic conditions truly are, despite inaccurate unemployment and wage statistics, principles – not parties – begin to shape and mold the future. Max intends to bring his message of common sense, belief in the individual, and the dignity in human life, to communities in District 49B and beyond that may not have had an understanding of them before. Minnesota has been given much; he has also been given much and believes those who have much must be good stewards with what they’ve been given.

Max was featured on the Republican Roundtable show recently, and that can be viewed online.  CLICK HERE. 

Max Rymer is working hard daily to connect with voters of all ages in the area, raise necessary funds, and communicate his principle-driven stance on issues. And he’s clearly still enjoying the experience, bringing his energy, smile, and keen vision of a better future to the task.

Max’s positions on key issues – Fiscal Responsibility, Economic Prosperity, Education, Transportation & Infrastructure – are eloquently explained on his website, Maxforhouse.com  (Click Here) and have been warmly received as he’s spoken with voters. He knows he’s viewed as young, and not your average politician. And that’s a good thing. Max is door-knocking at all addresses in the area, not just those of “known Republicans”. Like many of his Millennial generation, Max is principle-centered and he’s found his messages of less-intrusive, limited, effective government are broadly accepted. Principles go beyond politics.

I caught up with Max for a short break between phone calls and door-knocking to learn more about his views on the role of government, some local issues, and his strategy for the campaign.

On Fiscal responsibility: The state should not spend beyond its means. The state has a surplus of funds from taxes. Yet during the last legislative session, legislators were still proposing to take out loans and raise taxes; that’s simply not right.

On Legislative Special Sessions: As a rule of thumb: No, these should not be called.  Legislators should do their jobs in the time allotted.  This year, if the only way to get a special session would be to agree to proceed with more construction of light rail, that would be a huge negative - and our Governor certainly seems adamant about that.  Putting the proposed minimal road and bridge construction on the back-burner for another season is a net neutral. The proposed tax-relief would be nice, but not at the cost of agreeing to even more spending and especially not on light rail. Though the Speaker has made promises to not budge, the House's track record on negotiating indicates otherwise.

On Transportation:  Place a long-term moratorium on light rail construction and viability studies.  The government has gone back to a 100-year-old, outmoded model - trains - to try to address today’s urban needs.  While it’s not practical to now dismantle the recently-built train infrastructure, government funding should focus on maintenance and expansion of roads and bridges.  Rely on the private industry that brought us innovations like Uber and drone-delivery services to come up with solutions for today’s urban transportation needs.

On the Met Council and Hennepin County Commissioners: The Met Council should be abolished.  There’s nothing they do that a legislative Capital Ways and Means Committee couldn’t do.  When you have a group of unelected officials making critical decisions at any level, it’s a slippery slope.  The Met Council spends money like no other, and is making critical decisions including those around urban redevelopment.  The Met Council, appointed by the Governor, is not non-partisan and is actually increasingly partisan and divisive. 

Another effectively partisan “non-partisan” group, the elected Hennepin County Commissioners, also merits closer scrutiny.  They’ve recently been working to establish yet-another Family Council / social-services division.

On Education:  School choice should be up to the parents. It’s fascinating that educating everybody well is a partisan issue; this is a moral issue, not a political one.   One example of open school choice:   Max recently visited Hope Academy in Minneapolis, a private inner-city school with a sliding-fee tuition.  Parents must agree to volunteer at the school and students begin each day reciting a morning salutation that includes: “Do things when told the first time,” and “Respect each other”.  Max believes students from the area would have less of a chance at life without Hope Academy.

Reaching out to younger voters with technology-enabled messages on issues that matter to them now is one intentional strategy for this campaign.  Max uses short messages and photos on social-media (Twitter, Facebook) several times a week to provide glimpses of his daily campaign efforts and comment on current issues. 

He and his team have also produced several short video messages, viewable from his website, to “Max-plain” his stance on a handful of specific issues.

a) Public financing of sports facilities:  A huge subsidy to private owners is not appropriate use of public tax funds.

b) Estate and gift taxes:  MN tax law encourages high net-worth individuals to leave the state, and confiscates family funds or forces property-sale by heirs when a wealthy person, like Prince, dies. The state has no moral claim here – the estate should belong to the heirs.

c) Sunday beer sales:  The government should be less-intrusive and should not be telling retail businesses when they must be open or closed. The morality of Sunday / Sabbath liquor sales is clearly no longer the underlying purpose of the law. Legislators should stop supporting corporate liquor-industry lobbyists for those wanting to avoid a day of employee pay. And they should stop blocking retailers who are willing to be open on Sunday. Legislators from both parties and 70% of voters agree that it’s time for this to change.