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June 26, 2010

Candidate profile: Eric Johnson: Study in contrasts

By James Salzer Atlanta Journal-Constitution Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON — Eric Johnson spent most of his career as a political bomb-thrower. A Democrat-skewering, politically incorrect, tax-hating bomb-thrower.

But Georgians saw another side of Johnson in early 2003, when the Senate Republican leader announced he would back new Gov. Sonny Perdue’s plan to raise cigarette taxes.

The state was in a recession, and Perdue had called for a tax hike that was immediately opposed by many Republicans. Johnson’s support helped keep the increase — and Perdue’s first budget — from going down the tubes in the GOP’s first year in power since Reconstruction.

“It would have been easy to say, ‘we’re not going to do it,’ and leave a brand-new governor in the middle of a recession hanging out there all by himself,” said Johnson, a Savannah Republican who resigned from the Senate last year. “That’s not leadership,” he said. After a decade of being the statehouse’s most quotable member of the opposition, the outsider became an insider responsible for setting — and defending — the leadership’s agenda.

And now he’s seeking to make that transformation complete by becoming governor.

Early polling has Johnson fourth in the GOP race, but with deep-pocketed Republican backing and three decades of campaign experience, those who know him say don’t count him out.

“He is a very, very good strategist,” said Gary Wisenbaker, a Savannah lawyer and longtime GOP activist. “He thinks, ‘This may not work in the short term, but it may carry us in the long term.’ ”

That kind of long-term outlook has been important for Johnson, a Louisiana-born architect, who got his start on the campaign of Mack Mattingly when he upset Democrat U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge in 1980.

Johnson did grass roots work for the GOP until he decided to run for the state House in 1992. At the time, Democrats had been running the state for 120 years and Republicans held 45 of 236 legislative seats. Johnson won that election and then took a Senate seat two years later.

He quickly made a name for himself as a sharp-witted spokesman for Republicans.

When actress Jane Fonda came to the Statehouse to lobby against legislation limiting sex education, Johnson quipped, “Jane Fonda lecturing the Senate about sex education is like Bill Clinton talking to us about marital fidelity. They may be familiar with the subject matter, but I don’t want my children to learn it from them.”

Johnson became leader of the Senate Republicans in 1998, the same year Democrat Roy Barnes became governor. He proved a worthy opponent for Barnes.

He fought Barnes’ attempts to change the state flag, which included the Confederate battle emblem. Johnson said he opposed the way Barnes changed the flag without a public vote. He waved the old flag proudly from a convertible in the 2001 St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“To me, the whole flag issue had nothing to do with race and everything to do with Southern pride and what makes the South special,” he said.

In 2000, Johnson complained about the Democrats’ school reform package and huge increases in education spending. “Been there, done that, spent that,” he said.

When Republicans became the majority party, Johnson had a different role to play. And some of his statements left him open to charges of flip-flopping.

When Perdue proposed a large increase in education spending six years after Barnes did,  Johnson said, “Investing in children is never a bad deal.”

As a member of the minority, Johnson criticized Democratic leaders for raising big money — often from lobbyists — even when they didn’t face opposition. “We are trying to change the culture that provides special access to people with money,” he said at the time.

Now he brags that his state Senate campaigns raised more than $1 million —  much of it from lobbyists and special interests — that he donated to the Republican Party and Republican candidates.

Johnson consistently worked to grow the GOP in Georgia. He helped get Perdue elected governor in 2002, and then helped persuade some Democrats to switch parties in the Senate. By the time Perdue was sworn in, the Senate had a Republican majority.

As a member of the new leadership, Johnson held sway over legislation and pushed many of his own bills, including legislation to provide state money to parents to pay for private schools. Johnson was behind a law that provides vouchers to parents with children who have special needs. If elected, he promises to make vouchers available to all parents who want state help for private school tuition.

Like the Democrats he criticized, Johnson also made sure he looked after his home town, getting money in the state budget for construction and tourist projects in Savannah.

He backed a sales tax exemption in 2007 on equipment used in the repair of aircraft not registered in Georgia. The savings, which went largely to a local company, Gulfstream, was estimated at $11.6 million a year.

A little more than a month after the exemption passed, Gulfstream announced that it was leasing two buildings from the company Johnson worked for, North Point Real Estate.

Johnson said the tax break and leases were not related. He said the tax break came out of negotiations that he was not involved in to keep company business in Savannah.  And, he said, North Point won the leases through a competitive bid process.

Johnson also defends another decision made that year. A legislative committee he chaired dropped an ethics complaint against Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson that accused Richardson of having an affair with a utility lobbyist. The complaint was dismissed without an investigation.

Almost three years later, Richardson resigned after his ex-wife said he had, in fact, had an affair with the lobbyist.

Johnson said legislative rules didn’t allow for the committee to investigate the charges.

Throughout his career, Johnson has worked on meaty issues, including Atlanta’s sewer repairs, and headline-grabbing efforts, such as his bid to slow the issuance of Florida Gator license tags.

That contrast is what makes him hard to figure out, said former legislative colleague Tom Bordeaux, a Savannah lawyer and a Democrat. “I like Eric, but I am puzzled by Eric. You can sit down and have a very rational and mature conversation with him about policy and about what you need to do for this state, ” Bordeaux said. “The next day you read something about him going after some business that is selling devil masks.”

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