Allen Shen
Name: Allen Shen
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone:
Campaign Website: www.allenshenformn.com
Twitter handle: https://x.com/shenforhouse
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080164073764
Candidate Bio
What are your top three priorities if elected, and how might they be affected by growing uncertainty around state and federal funding?
How would you characterize the business climate in the East Metro? Please elaborate on your answer.
The Metro area in the state of Minnesota has some of the highest corporate taxes and excessive business regulations.
For our business climate, we have not been fully recovered since post Covid, where I know, many other states have recovered to the pre-covid level. Don’t take my word for it, just take a walk in Downtown St. Paul or Downtown Minneapolis on a weekday and see for yourself. Remember how prosperous and busy it was in 2019?
We have to have some business-friendly policies to attract companies to invest here and get the energy back.
Please characterize your perspective on the ideal collaboration between government and the business community when it comes to tackling challenges such as education, housing, workforce development, or other priority areas.
I think I will need to have conversations with local businesses and hear from them about what they can do and able to do. I do know that many times, business want to do good things in the community, but they are blocked by policies and regulations.
I started the business students case competition, which invites businesses providing students a real business case to work on, give students the education they can’t receive from classrooms. But most schools don’t have a program like that. Can we use legislation process to promote that? I am not sure, but that’s an area we can explore in.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address our state’s critical labor shortage?
I have noticed that many businesses faced labor shortage after Covid, never found out the real reason behind it. Is it possible due to life style changes that happened during Covid? Do people prefer to have a job that’s 100% remote? Is it because those workers from 2019 now only looking for jobs that’s remote? If that’s a cause, what can we do to incentivize people to come back to the office to work.
We might have to push hard to make people go back into the office buildings again in order to revive the downtown skyways.
I will also explore possibilities for job trainings, apprenticeships where you can get a paid training on the job before fully hired.
This goes back to the whole culture shift of too many people went into four year college degrees and not enough students went into trade school learning about being an electrician, plumber, carpentry, or welding. Can we go back to respecting all jobs and not treating office jobs as the only jobs that can bring you good incomes.
The Legislature enacted several new workplace mandates in recent years, including Paid Family and Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification standards. If elected, how would you evaluate the impact of these policies on the East Metro economy and workforce, and what principles would guide any changes you'd seek to make?
Yes, we have to evaluate the impacts of these policies.
The Paid Family leave is being heavily abused; people can now just take paid leaves for no reasons at all. Yes, we have to study these impacts in order to make changes to them or reform them completely.
The principles I would follow would be based on people honesty, and willing to work hard. We have a culture now that people are always looking for loopholes to benefit themselves only. That will change.
What are your strategies to address public safety challenges in your district and the state?
First, we have to stop the “Defund Police” sentiment that’s been pushed by Keith Elison.
We need to make illegal activities to face consequences again.
For example, the mob that invaded my church, they still don’t need to face charges, where they clearly violated the FACE act. Hold people accountable and that will send a message to others that there will be consequences when you break the law.
How would you work to improve transportation options in the district/state, including improved safety for transit riders, pedestrian/bike, and drivers alike?
Bikes: Why do we put all the bike lanes on the major high traffics roads? Shouldn’t we put the bike lanes on secondary low traffic roads? Often, I see the bike lanes were put in on the double yellow line high traffic roads, changing 4 lane roads down to 2 lane roads. It congests the traffic more and as a biker myself, I wouldn’t feel too safe to bike on those high traffic roads, I would much prefer to bike on trails or on low traffic roads.
Why do we have Metro transit lines that has super low ridership? For the Metro Transit Gold Line, the ridership is so low that I often see only see one or two riders on that bus and sometimes that bus is completely empty, when the ridership for a Metro line is that low, does it make sense to keep it in operation? I think we should only build a Metro line when data proves that the ridership demand is high.
For more transportation issues, visit my issues page at:
https://www.allenshenformn.com/other-issues
What ideas do you have to address housing shortages and affordability?
I think one of the reasons that’s causing the housing shortage is these huge real-estate companies buying up single family homes and turning them into for profit businesses or rentals. I think the big real-estate company can invest in building high rises apartments, but we should keep those companies from buying single family home units.
When talking about affordability in housing, one of the biggest costs is the property taxes, it feels like you have to pay rent to the government in order to live in the houses you own. Does it make sense to you? In Ramsey County we have seen the biggest jump in property taxes in 2026. I would want to either put a cap on property taxes that it can’t go above a certain percentage or dollar amount, or take away the government’s power to decide the value of your homes.
Minnesota's current two-year budget shows a surplus, but state forecasters project a significant structural imbalance beginning in the 2028-2029 biennium. What steps would you take to address this long-term challenge? Please include specific ideas for reducing spending, increasing revenue, or reforming state programs.
I think we can increase the revenue by taking back the $20 billion fraud money.
We can reduce spending by preventing Fraud.
Remember this, when MN government says they need more budget, it just means there’s more fraud in the system.
And one policy we should review is this new Paid Family Leave, I think it’s been heavily abused.
Minnesota has faced several high-profile fraud cases involving public programs in recent years. The Legislature recently passed a new Office of the Inspector General on a bipartisan basis. Beyond this new office, what additional steps would you support to strengthen fraud prevention and rebuild public trust in how the state manages taxpayer-funded programs?
Start with severe punishment, so far for the fraud cases, we gave them a slap on the wrist kind of sentencing. For the fraudsters who stole millions of dollars was only sentenced for about half year in jail. This will only encourage more fraud. They will think this is a risk that’s worth taking. We have to use the fullest extend of the law and seek long imprisonment, that will make future fraudsters consider the risks before breaking the law.
We already have laws in our books to prevent this fraud; all we have to do is to enforce them. Because the senior leadership in government turned a blind eye to all the fraud, that’s why they happened for so long.
The answer is simple, holding people accountable for their actions, that’s it!
We know that state employees reported these fraud cases, but they were told to keep their mouth shut. It doesn’t matter what methods we propose, if the people on the top refuse to do it and keep covering for the fraud, we will always have fraud cases. The only way to stop fraud is to replace the leaders on the top.
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone:
Campaign Website: www.allenshenformn.com
Twitter handle: https://x.com/shenforhouse
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080164073764
Candidate Bio
- US Army Veteran
- Served on college board and was the Chair for International Relationship Committee
- International Business Professional, worked at global corporations working with people from across the globe.
- VP at a MN Business Association and founded an annual students’ business case competition. Started with only St Thomas and St. Olaf participating and grew it to 12 universities across from four states.
- Worked in the MN Trade Office under the Mark Dayton Admin.
What are your top three priorities if elected, and how might they be affected by growing uncertainty around state and federal funding?
- Election Integrity, Voter ID
- Stop and prevent Fraud
- Stop men competing in women sports.
How would you characterize the business climate in the East Metro? Please elaborate on your answer.
The Metro area in the state of Minnesota has some of the highest corporate taxes and excessive business regulations.
For our business climate, we have not been fully recovered since post Covid, where I know, many other states have recovered to the pre-covid level. Don’t take my word for it, just take a walk in Downtown St. Paul or Downtown Minneapolis on a weekday and see for yourself. Remember how prosperous and busy it was in 2019?
We have to have some business-friendly policies to attract companies to invest here and get the energy back.
Please characterize your perspective on the ideal collaboration between government and the business community when it comes to tackling challenges such as education, housing, workforce development, or other priority areas.
I think I will need to have conversations with local businesses and hear from them about what they can do and able to do. I do know that many times, business want to do good things in the community, but they are blocked by policies and regulations.
I started the business students case competition, which invites businesses providing students a real business case to work on, give students the education they can’t receive from classrooms. But most schools don’t have a program like that. Can we use legislation process to promote that? I am not sure, but that’s an area we can explore in.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address our state’s critical labor shortage?
I have noticed that many businesses faced labor shortage after Covid, never found out the real reason behind it. Is it possible due to life style changes that happened during Covid? Do people prefer to have a job that’s 100% remote? Is it because those workers from 2019 now only looking for jobs that’s remote? If that’s a cause, what can we do to incentivize people to come back to the office to work.
We might have to push hard to make people go back into the office buildings again in order to revive the downtown skyways.
I will also explore possibilities for job trainings, apprenticeships where you can get a paid training on the job before fully hired.
This goes back to the whole culture shift of too many people went into four year college degrees and not enough students went into trade school learning about being an electrician, plumber, carpentry, or welding. Can we go back to respecting all jobs and not treating office jobs as the only jobs that can bring you good incomes.
The Legislature enacted several new workplace mandates in recent years, including Paid Family and Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification standards. If elected, how would you evaluate the impact of these policies on the East Metro economy and workforce, and what principles would guide any changes you'd seek to make?
Yes, we have to evaluate the impacts of these policies.
The Paid Family leave is being heavily abused; people can now just take paid leaves for no reasons at all. Yes, we have to study these impacts in order to make changes to them or reform them completely.
The principles I would follow would be based on people honesty, and willing to work hard. We have a culture now that people are always looking for loopholes to benefit themselves only. That will change.
What are your strategies to address public safety challenges in your district and the state?
First, we have to stop the “Defund Police” sentiment that’s been pushed by Keith Elison.
We need to make illegal activities to face consequences again.
For example, the mob that invaded my church, they still don’t need to face charges, where they clearly violated the FACE act. Hold people accountable and that will send a message to others that there will be consequences when you break the law.
How would you work to improve transportation options in the district/state, including improved safety for transit riders, pedestrian/bike, and drivers alike?
Bikes: Why do we put all the bike lanes on the major high traffics roads? Shouldn’t we put the bike lanes on secondary low traffic roads? Often, I see the bike lanes were put in on the double yellow line high traffic roads, changing 4 lane roads down to 2 lane roads. It congests the traffic more and as a biker myself, I wouldn’t feel too safe to bike on those high traffic roads, I would much prefer to bike on trails or on low traffic roads.
Why do we have Metro transit lines that has super low ridership? For the Metro Transit Gold Line, the ridership is so low that I often see only see one or two riders on that bus and sometimes that bus is completely empty, when the ridership for a Metro line is that low, does it make sense to keep it in operation? I think we should only build a Metro line when data proves that the ridership demand is high.
For more transportation issues, visit my issues page at:
https://www.allenshenformn.com/other-issues
What ideas do you have to address housing shortages and affordability?
I think one of the reasons that’s causing the housing shortage is these huge real-estate companies buying up single family homes and turning them into for profit businesses or rentals. I think the big real-estate company can invest in building high rises apartments, but we should keep those companies from buying single family home units.
When talking about affordability in housing, one of the biggest costs is the property taxes, it feels like you have to pay rent to the government in order to live in the houses you own. Does it make sense to you? In Ramsey County we have seen the biggest jump in property taxes in 2026. I would want to either put a cap on property taxes that it can’t go above a certain percentage or dollar amount, or take away the government’s power to decide the value of your homes.
Minnesota's current two-year budget shows a surplus, but state forecasters project a significant structural imbalance beginning in the 2028-2029 biennium. What steps would you take to address this long-term challenge? Please include specific ideas for reducing spending, increasing revenue, or reforming state programs.
I think we can increase the revenue by taking back the $20 billion fraud money.
We can reduce spending by preventing Fraud.
Remember this, when MN government says they need more budget, it just means there’s more fraud in the system.
And one policy we should review is this new Paid Family Leave, I think it’s been heavily abused.
Minnesota has faced several high-profile fraud cases involving public programs in recent years. The Legislature recently passed a new Office of the Inspector General on a bipartisan basis. Beyond this new office, what additional steps would you support to strengthen fraud prevention and rebuild public trust in how the state manages taxpayer-funded programs?
Start with severe punishment, so far for the fraud cases, we gave them a slap on the wrist kind of sentencing. For the fraudsters who stole millions of dollars was only sentenced for about half year in jail. This will only encourage more fraud. They will think this is a risk that’s worth taking. We have to use the fullest extend of the law and seek long imprisonment, that will make future fraudsters consider the risks before breaking the law.
We already have laws in our books to prevent this fraud; all we have to do is to enforce them. Because the senior leadership in government turned a blind eye to all the fraud, that’s why they happened for so long.
The answer is simple, holding people accountable for their actions, that’s it!
We know that state employees reported these fraud cases, but they were told to keep their mouth shut. It doesn’t matter what methods we propose, if the people on the top refuse to do it and keep covering for the fraud, we will always have fraud cases. The only way to stop fraud is to replace the leaders on the top.