GOP's Johnson has seesawed between political highs and lows

In the Minnesota House, Jeff Johnson had it good.

The lawyer from Plymouth represented a comfortably Republican suburban district beginning in 2001 and was in the majority party for all six years he served in the Legislature. It put him in a prime position to sponsor bills that would become law.

For the past decade, Johnson has been a lonely conservative voice on the Hennepin County board. He often objects to things he doesn't like but rarely has the power to stop them.

In a few weeks, he'll find out if voters will send him back to the state Capitol and to a position of political strength. Johnson is the Republican nominee for governor, though he trails DFLer Tim Walz heading into the campaign's homestretch.

Johnson's political career is full of highs — six times a fall election victor — and lows — he ran and lost two prior statewide campaigns, including a bid for governor four years ago.

"Frankly, the fact that I ran before and lost makes me a strong candidate because I learned a lot," Johnson said upon launching his latest campaign, which has already led him past a former Republican governor in a primary upset. "I don't feel like I was 'rejected' in the last election."

Johnson didn't have to break much of a sweat when he ran for the Legislature or the Hennepin County board, routinely grabbing 60 percent or more of the vote. He scooped up about 75 percent in his last commissioner's race two years ago.

Record in the House

While in the House, he concentrated on education and public safety measures.

The first bill of his to become law expanded the ability of schools to remove students from class for disruptive conduct. He had a hand in a rewrite of property laws and when the government can claim land for public purposes. He was also the chief author of a law requiring businesses to expediently notify people of personal data breaches. And he was intimately involved in shaping a sweeping measure to respond to a meth-lab scourge of the early 2000s.

One Johnson-sponsored law sought to limit the ability of minors to rent and buy violent or mature-content video games. That one fell to a court challenge on constitutional grounds.

Johnson, who often complains Minnesota has become a nanny state, said some guardrails like those video-game restrictions are appropriate.

"It gave power to parents. Government didn't say your kids can't watch these," Johnson said this summer, explaining his how his rationale squares with his libertarian leanings. "If a parent was fine with it, they could. The point was to share some information with parents who didn't understand what was going on with these games their kids were and are playing."

By his third term, he was chairman of the House Civil Law Committee and he had ambitions of climbing the political ladder.

In 2005, he stood outside the attorney general's office to launch a campaign for that job, anticipating that the incumbent would run for governor and it would be a wide-open race.

"And I can guarantee you that I will not be in the business of driving good jobs and good employers and good people of the state of Minnesota in a relentless pursuit for headlines and higher office," Johnson said at his campaign kickoff.

Johnson got trounced in the 2006 election by current DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson. And, for a time, his political career was sidelined.

New chance

A new door opened a couple of years later when a longtime commissioner on the Hennepin County board decided to move on. Johnson won the spot.

But it wouldn't be like the Legislature; Johnson's conservative stances put him in the minority on the seven-member board.

"It's a nonpartisan board," said Mark Stenglein, who was a Hennepin County commissioner at the time. "But when any board controls $2 billion, it becomes real partisan, real quick."

Stenglein, who served with Johnson early on and supports his bid for governor, said his fellow commissioner was constrained in his ability to drive change.

"You have got to get three other votes to get anything done so for him to round up three other votes probably didn't happen too often," Stenglein said.

Johnson chairs the board's public safety committee, which largely ratifies grants for justice system, law enforcement and youth intervention programs.

Many of the full board's actions are unanimous, although not always. Now in his third term, Johnson regularly finds himself on the losing side of 6-1 or 5-2 votes.

Another commissioner, Linda Higgins, said Johnson seems to take those defeats in stride, but doesn't come off as strident.

"He isn't really a kind of a guy who rants and raves and throws temper tantrums," Higgins said. "That's just not the personality I've seen, anyway."

Higgins is backing Walz, Johnson's DFL opponent, in the governor's race. She was hesitant to be seen as criticizing her colleague. Commissioner Mike Opat, who is often the one with Johnson on the losing end of the lopsided votes, declined to be interviewed. Johnson has two years left on his board term if he loses in this fall's election.

'Pick my fights'

Johnson shrugs off the "commissioner no" nickname some have conferred on him. He said he merely has a different worldview than the others.

"I try to pick my fights," he said.

He need only walk outside the Hennepin County Government Center for a taste of his biggest frustration — spending for light rail transit. Whenever the topic comes up, he describes light rail as a waste of tax dollars and a transit option that has a negligible impact on congestion. The issue is front and center because of the board's role in the proposed Southwest Light Rail Line between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie.

In an interview, Johnson acknowledged being outgunned on the board's marquee transportation project.

"I'm not going to change the minds of six of my colleagues on Southwest Light Rail. And unfortunately we're voting on spending more money on that pretty much every other week," he said. "So I state my case and we move on and they are kind about letting me state my case."

If Johnson wins the governor's office on Nov. 6, he'll be in a position to halt Southwest in its tracks and do more than just "state my case" on a range of important topics.