As the old political saying goes, if you can’t get someone that’s related to Elvis Presley to run for Lt. Governor, you should endeavor to find someone that can impersonate him pretty good.
Yesterday, State Senator David Baria tweeted that a “prominent” Republican would switch parties and run for statewide office.
A prominent MS Republican will switch parties and announce candidacy for statewide office as a Democrat tomorrow at 2 p.m. at MS Capitol.
— David Baria (@dbaria) February 4, 2015
Apparently, Mississippi Democrats need to google what “prominent Republican” means.
Today, the mustard is off the hotdog, so to speak. The Clarion Ledger reports that Tim Johnson will announce a run for Lt. Governor as a Democrat. Tim Johnson was once a Republican state senator turned Madison County Supervisor. He was so popular as a Supervisor, that the City of Madison Board of Alderman unanimously voted to urge his resignation.
Apparently, he doesn’t like Mary Hawkins-Butler very much . . . and vice versa.
In 2011, Johnson ran an ill-fated race against Dick Hall in the Republican primary for Central District Transportation Commissioner where he lost in the primary 70/30 including losing his home county of Madison by almost a 3:1 margin.
Since holding elective office, Johnson has made some interesting appearances in news stories including one about the massive taxpayer fees funded to study the Madison County Airport.
Back in 2009, there was a relatively ugly incident about BoxCar Bingo and the Fine Arts Institute of Mississippi (FAIR) run by Tim Johnson’s wife Lynn. The charity bingo operation which went ostensibly to benefit FAIR wound up not benefitting much of anyone except the people running it and as a result, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann pursued shutting Boxcar down. Tim Johnson was listed in 2009 as FAIR’s lobbyist.
And what does the liberal MS blogosphere think? Well, bless their hearts, I think they had their heart set on someone else besides Tim Johnson as Cottonmouth tweeted a photo clearly inferring that it was Republican State Senator Gray Tollison who was switching even though that’s clearly not the case.
Mississippi Democrats have a big announcement tomorrow… pic.twitter.com/UqqfTTXGlI
— Cotton Mouth (@cottonmouthMS) February 4, 2015
Democrats seem content to keep trading field goals for touchdowns. For this “party switch” news on Tim Johnson, the facts are that Republicans have continued to turn elected Democrats to party switch at a break neck pace and that has most prominently occurred in the state Legislature netting folks like Tollison. The stated strategy in the Clarion Ledger article was to bait Tate Reeves into spending money so he doesn’t get involved in other races. But the truth is that Reeves will now have reason to raise out of state money albeit against a pretty weak challenger (assuming no Republican hops in a primary). Politically, to have the Democrats highest standard bearer for office right now be a Republican that absolutely got trounced in a primary last time out is more evidence that the doldrums they find themselves in.
In the meantime, Mississippi Democrats can dream about what will be this election cycle.
Tim (Elvis) Johnson performs C.C.Rider from SunDolphin Video Productions on Vimeo.
Magnolia Tribune
