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Campaign Phone Number
2532655131
Biography (max 750 char)
David Olson is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Warrant Officer, father of four, former public-finance banker, and 12-year Peninsula School Board director. A Gig Harbor resident since 2005, David and his late wife, Tonia, raised their family in the Peninsula School District, where three of their children graduated. Elected to the school board in 2013 and re-elected three times, David has served as President, Vice President, and Legislative Representative. He also served on the Pierce County Charter Review Commission and has led or supported numerous civic and nonprofit organizations. David is running to bring steady leadership, fiscal accountability, safer communities, and stronger public schools to Olympia.
My top budget priorities are public education, public safety, transportation reliability, behavioral health, and services for vulnerable residents. Washington’s Constitution makes public education the state’s paramount duty. I would protect classroom funding, special education, Running Start, Transitional Kindergarten, and career and technical education.
Before asking taxpayers for more, Olympia should prove existing dollars are spent responsibly. I support independent audits of education, transportation, capital projects, and agency operations. If reductions became necessary, I would first look at administrative overhead, vacant and duplicative positions, and programs that cannot demonstrate results. Effective services should be protected; ineffective programs corrected or ended.
Washington’s election system is generally fair and secure, but public confidence still matters. The state should keep improving transparency, ballot tracking, voter-roll maintenance, signature verification, chain-of-custody procedures, and timely reporting.
I support stronger ballot-tracking safeguards, including a unique barcode or tracking identifier for each registered voter’s ballot envelope, while fully preserving vote secrecy. That would help confirm only one ballot is accepted per voter and identify problems if ballot returns ever exceeded the number of eligible registered voters.
We should also strengthen civic participation through voter education, clear explanations of election safeguards, accessible voter guides, and more civics instruction in schools.
The most effective public-safety strategy is to support law enforcement, hold repeat offenders accountable, and address the addiction, mental-health, and homelessness challenges driving too much crime. Washington should ensure local agencies have enough officers, training, tools, and staffing to respond quickly and protect communities.
We also need stronger consequences for repeat theft, fentanyl trafficking, and violence, while expanding treatment, crisis response, and reentry programs that actually reduce reoffending. Public safety is not just about enforcement or services alone; it requires both. State government should focus on safer neighborhoods, accountable courts, better data, and measurable results.
Reliable local journalism is important to civic participation, government accountability, and informed voting. State government should not control or influence news coverage, but it can support access to public information by strengthening open-government laws, improving agency transparency, protecting public records access, and ensuring local governments provide timely, understandable information.
I would be cautious about direct subsidies that could compromise independence or create political favoritism. Any support should be neutral, transparent, and focused on access, civic education, public notices, and preserving independent local reporting without government interference in content or editorial decisions.
I support keeping Washington’s redistricting process bipartisan and independent, but it should be more transparent and easier for the public to follow. For 2031, I would support earlier release of proposed maps, clearer explanations for major boundary changes, more public hearings across the state, stronger requirements to keep communities of interest together, and better public access to mapping data.
Districts should be compact, fair, and understandable, and should not be drawn to protect incumbents or favor one party. If the commission cannot reach agreement, the process should include clear deadlines and public accountability so voters can see how decisions were made.
The greatest challenge facing the 26th District is affordability. Families are being squeezed by the rising cost of housing, groceries, fuel, utilities, insurance, taxes, and transportation. State government should stop making those costs worse.
I would work to reduce unnecessary taxes and fees, improve ferry reliability, streamline permitting, expand housing supply, and require agencies to consider the real cost of new mandates on families and small businesses. Olympia should focus on core responsibilities, spend existing dollars responsibly, and deliver measurable results before asking taxpayers for more.
Campaign Phone Number
2535149413
Biography (max 750 char)
I grew up here and have lived in every part of the district from Fox Island to Bremerton, Gig Harbor to the Key Peninsula, and now in South Kitsap. I graduated from Peninsula High where my mom teaches, and I worked through high school for my dad’s local small business before I went on to college. As a lawyer, I’ve worked for the Northwest Justice Project where I served survivors of crimes like domestic violence and human trafficking. I’ve also worked with Kitsap Legal Services in housing law serving working families struggling to make ends meet. As the child of a public-school teacher, and a product of our schools, I believe wholeheartedly that quality education is the core to expanding opportunity for all. I want to give back.
My top budget priority is supporting education from pre-k to college or career technical education so that every student can gradate on a pathway to success. We’ve made some good progress in the past two years despite facing large budget deficits by completing a trade school in Bremerton and creating the Promise Accounts for 10,000 early childhood education spots.
We need to take a hard look at ways to stabilize the budget. That means ensuring that individual programs are delivering the results that they’re expected to. In terms of revenue, we need to be careful not to raise costs even further on working families and seniors. I voted against the gas tax which penalizes our commuter district and voted for a millionaire’s tax amendment that would have lower the sales tax for everyone.
Washington State has a robust and fair election system, and I believe that the voters understand that and have a high degree of confidence in our local elections officials. What I think is lacking is that not enough people vote, and that lies in people believing their vote makes a difference and there being accountability of elected officials. I’ve spoken to so many people at the door on the campaign trail or through my Legislative office who feel that politicians Federally are making their lives harder, and politicians in WA aren’t listening well enough to their concerns. The solution is simple – we need to put people over politics and use common-sense. I’ll continue to work both within my party and across the aisle to do deliver real results for working families and seniors.
I sponsored legislation to fund more local police officers in our community, and while we didn’t get that passed this last session, and I’ll continue working to try to help local police departments meet the staffing levels they need to respond to crimes and protect our community. We also need to ensure those with severe behavioral health crises have a place where they and others are safe. We need to address criminal activity across the board from human trafficking to retail theft. And we also need to make sure that those who are lost in substance abuse and mental health crises are not left on the side of the road but have a mechanism for receiving the treatment and services they need.
I support local journalism and support for journalism from a lawmaker perspective starts with respect for the first amendment and the freedom of the press. Support for local journalists from my standpoint includes not undermining their credibility, and making personal attacks, but rather ensuring that I'm making my policy positions clear. There are pieces of legislation that are before the legislature to help promote stability for local journalism, and I support those efforts, as reliable and independent journalism is a cornerstone of our democracy.
What we’ve seen nationally is an absolute mess, and an absolute embarrassment because we should be able to abide by the simple principle that politicians should not choose their voters. Unfortunately, too many politicians are making it plain that they do not care for that principle. "Gerrymandering" is one of the fundamental problems with our current political climate along with money in politics. Washington has tried leading by example when the voters set up an independent redistricting commission to ensure that the voters can choose their politicians and not the other way around. My hope is that the gerrymandering fever breaks nationally well before we need to redistrict again as part of the normal once-per-decade census in WA.
Affordability. We simply must do more to help working families and seniors struggling to make ends meet. This past session, I worked to bring down grocery costs by supporting our local farmers, and I opposed the gas tax. But we must do more to bring down the rising costs of gas, groceries, healthcare, housing, childcare, and the everyday goods in-between. Providing real tax relief to regular folks as part of any new revenue would go a long way toward putting money back in families’ pockets.
