Benjamin Olsen, Democratic Candidate for House District #48, May 20, 2026

At this time I'm visiting with Benjamin Olsen. Benjamin is the one of the three Democratic candidates seeking the nomination in House District 48. And first, thanks for taking some time to come and visit with us. Well, I appreciate you having me on here. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What about your background? Where did you come from? Outside of fact, you do reside in the Story County, right? Oh, yeah, that's correct. Yep, I live over in Ames. That is now currently part of the District for 48. Okay. Yeah, it's a little bit about my background. So I'm a native of Iowa, and I grew up out of McCallsburg, Iowa, up in Northern Story County. And I went and attended public schools here and eventually made my way over to ISU, and I got a degree in Aerospace Engineering. And this degree allowed me to get a job over in Marshalltown, Iowa, working with Emerson Electric, formerly known as Fisher. So nowadays I work as a product order engineer over with that group, and it's been a blast. Okay, first time pursuing political office? Oh, yeah, first time around the block. Okay, so tell me a little bit about your first thoughts on being a candidate. Well, it's certainly been a unique experience, I'd say. It has brought additional points, viewpoints that I haven't considered. It's been eye-opening in a lot of different ways, and it's refreshing. I get to experience a lot of people's perceptions of the world, and I frankly enjoy it, and I thrive on it. Okay. So what attracted you to this race in all of a sudden? I mean, we've had a couple of candidates in the past. It's been a pretty strong Republican district. Yeah, that's true. One of the primary reasons why I got attracted to this race was more when I found out my representation came more so out of Boone than it did from Ames. So a couple of years ago when they re-drew the maps, I found out there's about one big line that runs through the southern part of Ames, cuts everyone off, and then comes back to Boone. Yeah. And so to me, that map looked more jury-mandered than it did representative of the people there. So I wanted to run for my voice to be heard. I didn't feel that my voice was being represented. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the things that have been happening at the legislative level, of course. A lot of different topics this past session. So what are some of the big things that you had concerns about, or that attract you to this, or what you would like to work on? Yeah. Well, my biggest thing is public school funding. So of course, I'm sure you know that the Boone School District made the news recently back in February for cutting some of their programs. Orchestra, Junior High Family and Consumer Science, and their Teacher Embediment Fund, that was all reallocated to make up for their loss of funding at the state level. So in this position, what I like to work on is bringing more funding to public schools because well, let's face it, the job market nowadays, it's not great, but it's going to be worse down the road too. These students, they're not just competing with themselves, with other states, but they're competing internationally with foreign countries and their workforces. And if they aren't prepared for that future, they're going to be in for a world of herd. So we need a prioritized education. We know, you mentioned like for the Boone School District, but we know other school districts around part of Ballard, Gilbert, they all took some big hits. Yeah, that they did. And it's being felt and they'll continue to be felt. And we need to prioritize the funding for these these programs. It's experiences that, well, frankly, I got to have. I'm sure maybe you had as well. But to take that away from from kids, they're losing out on relationships and opportunities, growth in areas that they no longer have the ability to grow in. And, you know, for example, the arts, they tend to always get cut. But it's been shown in studies that experience with with music and with art and that creative ability, it also stems and helps with other areas of education, such as the math and sciences. So so we know that part of the property tax reduction thing was to remove some of the property taxes that the schools were pursuing. But to do that, the state was going to backfill and they took some of the save dollars to do that. I'm guessing not a high priority for you. That probably was why are we taking it out of this pocket to put it here? Yep. So definitely cutting back what we have for property taxes was not something I'm proud of that we did at the state level. Dipping into our state's quote unquote savings was not a great method for making up for that funds either. So I'm, as an Iowan, I'm a little annoyed about that. That shouldn't be something we're doing. We shouldn't be overspending and then falling back on prior years tax dollars to make up for it. It's not the proper way to run a business. So one of the challenges and I'm guessing people will debate the point with you on it, but we have a lot of declining enrollment, which is leading to some of the financial issues for school districts. How do we stem that? I mean, you know, times are changing. We don't have as many children that are coming in families. We may have the same number of families, but we have fewer children. You're absolutely right with that. When there are fewer kids attending schools and there are a lot of issues related to it. The biggest one that I've seen is people pulling out their kids to homeschool them due to bullying, due to lack of any control, and people worry about their kids and how they're being raised. And so I've seen a lot of, and I've met with a lot of people that they've lost faith in public schools and their ability to actually educate their kids. And so again, this is why we need to come back to bringing more, more than what we currently offer in our public schools. I think that the ability to provide adequate education, but also have accountability, you know, kids can't be acting out and irrationally in schools and bullying, especially with the online nowadays, we need a way to prevent kids from pushing to do something like that. There's a lot of negativity in the world and trying to find ways to mitigate that, especially in kids, especially how influential kids are. It's a problem. We need the children to keep, we're going to take us forward, aren't they? Yes, that they are. Let's talk, okay, so let's talk a little bit about a few of the other things going on that we did not see the legislature do anything on eminent domain this time. So I'm guessing you probably have a few thoughts about that. Yeah, I'm not a big fan on eminent domain. I did see the Senate had a bill they were at least discussing. And effectively, the bill said if we have explored every other option for eminent domain, then and only then can we allow the use of eminent domain in carbon pipeline situations. And to me, that sounds like a bad joke. So I'm not big on eminent domain myself. I don't believe that we should be carving out people's lots for the use of carbon pipelines. I don't believe that that is something beneficial for the state. And that's what we need to point out. We're talking about that. There's the public interest part of eminent domain, which I'm guessing you probably for public thoroughfare, streets, whatever. Yeah, if you want to carve out land in the park to make a sidewalk, of course, if we need a road, a different part of town that's being developed, absolutely. But if you want to carve out, you know, a big old chunk of land for someone's private corporation, that's not something we should be doing. That's not in the interest of the public. So I'm against eminent domain be used for private interest, not for public. All right. What are some of the other things people have been bringing up to you? Water quality is definitely a big one. So as you have heard already in the past, that Iowa has a high level of cancer development. And we're second highest in the state in the nation, rather. And a lot of this comes from a runoff from our fields. And well, I'm also sure you heard that Des Moines, they got one of those really fancy filtration systems. Yeah, big, big RO plant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's been running for quite a while this year. Oh, that it has, that it has. But last year was having some difficulty. They started issuing out water quality alerts. And arguably now from what I've probably back, yeah, they'll probably be back. But from what I've heard and understood, we have one of the best filtration systems in the world. And this is not standing up to our water. And so that that's a big thing. If the best in the world isn't good enough. I think maybe we need to address the problem at the source. And I'm not saying, you know, farmers need fertilizer, farmers need an anhydrous to be applied to their fields. But we also can't be applying so much that's literally running off into our waterways. You know, of course, our local farmers, they go when they apply it, but they apply it sparingly because of how expensive it is. Sure. From a corporate standpoint, you can apply almost as much as your wallet provides. And so that that is a lot of where the problem runs from. You know, as a corporate farmer, if you go in and you want to get the best yield you can, you apply as much fertilizer as you adequately can can hold an application. That's that's where a lot of the runoff comes from. So but there are ways to mitigate this. There's a there's a couple ways to at least prevent it. You know, there's full filtration barriers, you know, eduroprops, wetlands, people have suggested, um, filter drainage tiling. And sure, these are methods outlined by USDA. But the biggest one is how much you're applying and when you're applying it. You know, if you're applying it after the ground's already froze, it's going to run off in the spring when it thaws. And that's that's wasted revenue. As a farmer, you don't want to do that. That's not good business. No, that's not good business. So there's definitely things that we can do to encourage and try to push for higher quality water. But it has to be addressed at the source. Otherwise, we're just going to have worse and worse problems down the road. Ag-related again, obviously, we are a big egg state. A lot of our industry ag-related type things as well. But you're even in your area, your expertise, I mean, the things that we're seeing with the use of drones and technology and agriculture, it's, I mean, we're probably cutting edge again, as far as more, most people go. Oh yeah, no, we're definitely advancing for agriculture. But it's still, I mean, it's one of our big sources. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've seen drones being used in our fields here. Sure. I've seen technology, you know, 10, 20 years ago, you wouldn't have seen. So it's amazing. So how do we get more diversity? That's that's another challenge. We got the ag-related part and a lot of ag-related ties to it. But so you're working now again with a company that basically does just a lot of electronics, a lot of technology. Do we get more of that? How do we get more? And again, then we're talking, do we have data centers? Do we have what what else is going on? You know, you got to have some concerns about where we're going and how what we're going to have. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the data centers that they're trying to push. It's to me, it's more of a black box. Nothing's going to ever beat human creativity. So you can make something that, you know, talks like a duck, walks like a duck, they can act like a duck, but it's never going to replace you or me. Because I can just pull the plug, or you can just pull the plug and it's it's done. Once the power is out, it's gone. And you're seeing issues with one of the states out west, they had one of their major electrical providers, they're rerouting their services to one of their large data centers, because they can no longer provide to their customers. And so if you go and you push to prioritize, you know, something like a data center, you're going to see a lot of lost services, lost people, lost goods come from it. So it's hard to attract people to stay in your home state and work here, especially if they have to fight a larger business or a larger point, I should say. Yeah. So at least from what I've seen, from what I grew up with, again, I grew up in a small town. What I understand is I really enjoyed the luxury of what I got from there. And a lot of folks as they went and they grew up, they had to move where the opportunity was. And that opportunity was in larger towns. You know, you have Ankeny, you have Des Moines, Iowa City. But even then, people that I graduated with, they're no longer around. And it's not because of family. It's not for any other reason than employment. They love the state. Yeah, because there's not a lot here. And you know, if you go down, again, I said Ankeny before, but if you go down there and you look at just what's around you, you have just an absolute hub of growth and development and opportunity. There are businesses crawling over each other, just trying to have a presence. And I think that growth, that opportunity is great, but it also could be better used in more rural areas as well. If you allow for more diversified rural expansion, if you take the local grocery stores, you know, not every grocery store has to be a Walmart. Not every gas station needs to be a quick start. If we allow for more growth locally, allow people to, let's say, migrate back a little bit more rurally, you have more equal opportunity for housing, you have more job development and more space to grow. Ankeny, and they're growing outwards so much, they're digging into the cornfields. It seems like every year they're an hour a mile farther out. Sure. So I'd like to see more diverse growth in our state. Some planned. Yeah, nothing just centralized. Yeah. Again, getting people back and we see people that will return and bring their families back. The biggie is finding adequate positions that interest them or the development that we see. So we still have challenges with economic development. Oh yeah, absolutely. But there is at least one good flip side to the integration of technology in our workforce. And so from what I've understood, a lot of people that work from home in our area, they're moving back to our more rural areas because they can afford it and they can have a home office. So they get a B in our community. They get to have a job as well and they get to just be around us. Have our rural life. Yeah. It's good. When you're out campaigning and visiting with people and stuff, I know that so your first time around, new to this and stuff, what other kinds of questions are they bringing up to you? Well, I've seen a lot of overlap at state and congressional level candidates. People are asking what's going on there and there's been a couple issues here and there and how things work and who to talk to about the county roads and things like that. Definitely a lot of overlap. Some of the things as you take a look back at what happened during this session of the legislature, were there other things that you had concerns about or things that you that they passed out that you had had issues with? Well, or thought could have been done differently. One of the biggies, especially when talking with folks is how the state likes to handle their budget. And so this session ended in a long, I believe 36 or 48 hours. It was a it was a long one. Yeah. Over the weekend on a Sunday night and so people weren't happy about it, but at least they got stuck at work. But budgets, they should be handled far before the end of the session. It should not be something pushed off. It's a big part of our state and how our money is being used. And if we push it off till the last minute, you're going to have a lot of issues. And so finances, they're a priority, especially for government. We should be doing that ahead of the game, probably towards the start, maybe even the middle, not the end. So that'd be a big one that a lot of people have been sharing overlap for. And this is the priorities of finance. Again, visiting with Benjamin Olsen. He is a Democratic candidate seeking the nomination to run in House District 48. So let's talk a little bit about your campaign. Obviously, you've been around visiting with people and stuff like that and trying to, I'm guessing, doing it when it's convenient, when you have time. How do they find out more about your campaign, get an opportunity to visit with you? Yeah, of course. So I'm online, Olsen for Iowa on Wix. I'm also in the local paper. I have ads going out there in the Times Republican. And then I've seen some social media ads for you. Yeah, I'm on their ads as well. I have lovely interviews with people like you. And I'm going door to door talking with people, as well as attending other various events. So we had a couple of meet and greets for candidates. That was a few weeks ago. You had a series of them that went around to the libraries and opportunity to meet people. Yeah, that's correct. And we're lastly going to have a forum, I believe, on the 30th for all three candidates. And people can come out and ask questions to us. I do appreciate you taking time to come and visit with us. I'll let us know a little bit more about your campaign. Good luck on this effort. Good luck in the primary and look forward to visiting with you again. As well. Thank you very much.