Miranda Stambler|THE SPECTRUM
North Dakota State student Timothy Sizemore has been endorsed by the Libertarian Party for his campaign in District 27. Originally from Gillette, Wyoming, Sizemore has been a North Dakota resident since 2010. This is Sizemore’s first year at NDSU after transferring from his three semesters at North Dakota State College of Science majoring in exercise science.
After being involved in the Libertarian Party for a couple years, he looked into the issues more closely after he realized District 27 was up for election this year, which then determined his wanting to run.
He believes that it’ll be challenging balancing running for office and being a full-time college student, but explained that he is not taking too many credits, that he is not overwhelmed and continues to utilize his support network.
With this being his first campaign, Sizemore described himself as being “pretty young and pretty new to politics,” but sees his ripe age of 30 as not too young nor too old for this position. Sizemore expressed that he has already seen his support grow since his announcement of candidacy at the beginning of February.
Why run now? “The political climate these past couple of years was something that really pushed me, but politics has been something that has really been a big interest of mine,” Sizemore explained. “I’m former military; I was in the army as an airborne infantryman and long-range surveillance operator, and I was deployed to Iraq in 2009, so as one might imagine with somebody that has that sort of background, international politics, especially, is something that’s been a big subject of interest of mine and it sort of just grew organically these past couple of years with the elections.”
Sizemore left the military because of a back injury, which through his rehabilitation inspired him to pursue his degree in exercise science, which he hopes to transition into physical therapy.
Although Sizemore was initially interested in law enforcement after the military and worked with different security companies, such as a correction officer in the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck. However, his injuries from the military ended up preventing him from pursuing his law enforcement career.
Through his experience in the military and then law enforcement, Sizemore explained that he was given the ability to “look at things from a military lens, also from a law enforcement lens — so I’ve been able to see how the justice system operates in those terms.”
Even though the Libertarian Party is seen as small and fairly new, making it less known, Sizemore thinks the party’s ideas have been around longer than people realize.
“The ideology has been a solid core in our national history. A lot of our founding fathers had a lot of really libertarian ideas. For example, Thomas Jefferson was all about having a really small government which allowed individuals to have their own civil liberties at heart and basically be able to conduct their own business the way they see fit, and that’s kind of one of the core tenants of libertarianism,” Sizemore said.
Sizemore further explained, “We (libertarians) believe that you, the individual, has a better understanding of how your life should be lived and the less government intervention there is to that effect the more prosperous you will be.”
There are many regulations Sizemore wants to be involved with, such as forms of taxation, but two topics he focused on were the blue laws and cannabis in North Dakota. He has been working to repeal the blue laws and plans to focus on that thoroughly if elected.
“Shannon Roers (District 46) — she is proposing a bill right now to push for a reform on the blue laws, so it’s nice because it’s a bipartisan bill, or it’s a bipartisan movement, and I think that I’m going to have a lot of support to that end,” Sizemore expressed.
His other focus is helping the Students for Sensible Drug Control as they have been petitioning to legalize cannabis in North Dakota, which Sizemore has been handing out petitions to help that pass.
Many see politics as either too far in the future or impossible to get involved with, especially when in college. The advice Sizemore shared was to “do your homework inside the college environment and out.” He continued, “One thing you’ll learn pretty quickly when you get out of college is that if you’re going to expect to grow — you should pick up a book every now and then.”
Sizemore explained that you need to continue reading and studying subjects you are interested in to not only stay in the loop, but to broaden your knowledge about that topic. He shared that paying attention to what people are saying around you is very important because those are the concerns and topics of others that you will be running to represent.
According to Sizemore, one advantage he has by being a college student as well as running a campaign is “learning how to network in today’s modern age.” Although he knows how to network, it is always changing through technology, so being up to date within society allows him to understand networking skills and enables him to grow his support system.
Sizemore shared his plans to reach out to local small businesses to gain an understanding from their own perspectives of how they could start their business and what hurdles they had to endure to further his understanding of the community and what he can do to help.
Sizemore is planning meet-and-greets and continues to monitor his Facebook messages from the people to see what issues they want to be considered. “I want to know what people’s interests are. I want to know what people’s concerns are,” Sizemore said.
Although he announced his candidacy later than most, Sizemore is working hard to further his support system and has many ideas of seeing a change within District 27. “I think there’s a lot of positive changes that can be made here,” Sizemore expressed.