You might think Olsen, a 50-year-old engineer from Weber County's Plain City, husband and father of three, has a double death wish.
First, he is the scarcely known Democratic challenger to Republican incumbent Rob Bishop in Utah's 1st Congressional District. Republicans have had a lock on that seat - which encompasses all of northern Utah and a slice of northern Salt Lake County - since 1981. Second, Olsen bursts with pride over his party affiliation in a state where you have to squint to find a donkey - if one appears at all - on most Democrats' campaign literature.
The matter might stir some talk at Saturday's state Democratic and Republican conventions. Olsen hopes so.
On Olsen's Web site - at http://www.steveolsen .org - the statement steps through his "conversion" from staunch Reagan Republican to diehard Demo. Sprinkled with humor, Olsen describes how the state party machinery and delegates muscled out dialogue at caucuses and paved the way for an arrogance of power in a GOP he no longer recognized.
"The arrogance of those people blew me away - and it also yielded an important insight: They were out of step with average Utahns," Olsen writes.
By telephone from Washington on Monday, Bishop said he has read Olsen's statement, but that "no one back home has ever brought it up to me." Olsen's premise, he says, puts him off, as does his opponent's perception of political history, which Bishop calls "revisionist."
"I was always taught it was neither tactful or polite to question the way people make their personal decisions. I believe the people of Utah can be trusted to make proper decisions in their homes and businesses."
Olsen poses that average Utahns would favor honesty in how the federal government can keep running up a near-bottomless deficit while still promising tax cuts. He wades into the abortion quagmire, urging people who oppose Roe v. Wade to start embracing access to health care, job training, child care and other support systems for women whose pregnancies are an economic hardship.
"Utah values stress the ideas of care for the poor, our neighbors and of practicing compassion," he said. "The Democrats haven't done a good job of cutting through fringe issues that alienate people and getting back to those values."
One more interesting note: Olsen is an LDS bishop who believes that Mormonism and Democratic politics fit hand in glove. He'll refer to the Book of Mormon's King Benjamin as his model for compassionate leadership. He counts the late LDS apostle and Democrat Hugh B. Brown as a hero and cites passages from the writings of liberal Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, whom he says "helped convert me to Democratic politics."
When wearing his bishop hat, Olsen says he concentrates on "bringing people who are lost or hurting back to the fold and work on healing them." He learned long ago that religion "isn't about punishing people, and neither is effective politics."
It sounds like a rerun of an earlier race in the First District, when Democratic businessman and LDS bishop Dave Thomas lost to Rob Bishop in 2002. But there's a factor in the coming off-year election that may shift some votes.
It's called George W. Bush.
Utah political pollster Dan Jones says early polling here and across the nation shows growing interest in cross-over voting in November. "It's early still, but indications are that people will look for the person more this year on the basis of who will vote as they would. The trend in 2004 was toward straight-ticket voting. And the president's dropping popularity is affecting other Republicans. No one is going to be clamoring for [Bush] to come out and endorse them."
If this is so, Olsen will consider his treatise worth the effort. If you are a Democrat without even knowing it, he writes, "it's OK, really. If true, I promise you won't die from it."
hmullen@sltrib.com, 801-257 -8610
