
Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson (13 November 1891-22 August 1936) was the Democratic Governor of Minnesota from 6 January 1931 to 22 August 1936, succeeding Theodore Christianson and preceding Hjalmar Petersen.
Biography[]
Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1891, the son of a Norwegian father and a Swedish mother. He learned Yiddish while serving as a shabbos goy for his Jewish neighbors, later campaigning in Yiddish on starting his political career. Olson worked as a stevedore in Seattle, Washington and joined the Industrial Workers of the World, adopting a populist, semi-socialist philosophy. Olson became a lawyer in New Prague, Minnesota in 1915, and he served as Hennepin County attorney from 1920 to 1931, joining the Farmer-Labor Party in 1924. He backed Robert M. La Follette's presidential bids, and he took on the Klan and the pro-right-to-work Minnesota Citizens Alliance (which hired a hitman to dynamite the home of a union leader) as a prosecutor. Olson became a hero to the labor movement, and he was elected Governor in 1930 amid the Great Depression. Supported by farmers, organized labor, and small businessmen, he overcame the conservative Republican state legislature to institute a progressive income tax, created social security for the elderly, expanded the state's environmental conservation programs, guaranteed equal pay for women and the right to collective bargaining, instituted a minimum wage and unemployment insurance, and unsuccessfully pushed for the nationalization of essential industries. Olson's support among the middle-class began to erode as his platform grew successively more radical, but he retained his labor and farmer support, while also allying with Franklin D. Roosevelt to block a third-party ticket against the Democrats in 1936 in exchange for federal patronage for the FLP. Olson was accused of having links with organized crime, and crusading newspaper editor Walter Liggett was murdered by gangster Kid Cann shortly after breaking the story. Olson died of stomach cancer while running for the US Senate in 1936.