Drew Johnson | |
---|---|
Born | Jason Andrew Johnson August 5, 1979 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Political commentator and columnist |
Known for | Founded Tennessee Center for Policy Research |
Political party | Republican |
Jason Andrew "Drew" Johnson (born August 5, 1979 in Johnson City, Tennessee) [1] is an American political columnist, policy analyst, and former think tank founder and executive.
Johnson is known as a government waste expert and government watchdog. He writes frequently about tax and budget issues, technology and telecommunications policy, and the environment, and is credited with popularizing the use of investigative journalism by think tanks. [2] [3]
He was the founder and first president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, now known as the Beacon Center of Tennessee. [4] He later edited the editorial page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press . He is a former columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Times . [5] [6]
Johnson also worked at the National Taxpayers Union, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and the American Enterprise Institute. [7] [8] [9]
Johnson is running in the Republican primary for Nevada's 3rd congressional district in the 2024 United States House of Representatives elections in Nevada. He was narrowly defeated in a 2022 bid for the Clark County Commission. [10]
Johnson grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee, and graduated from Science Hill High School in 1997. [11] He then earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Belmont University and a Master of Public Policy degree from Pepperdine University. [12] Johnson was a Koch Fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and the American Enterprise Institute. [13]
Johnson founded the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) in 2004. Under his leadership, the organization used the Tennessee Open Records Act of obtain Al Gore's home energy bills the day after the former Vice President won an Academy Award for the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth . [14] The records showed that, in 2006, Gore's Belle Meade, Tennessee home consumed nearly 221,000 kWh of electricity—more than 20 times the national average. [15] In 2006, Gore spent an average of $1,359 per month to power the home. [15]
After releasing Al Gore's home energy consumption, Johnson and other TCPR employees received death threats, harassing emails and threatening phone calls from Gore supporters and environmental activists. [16] [17] [18]
Johnson left TCPR at the end of 2009. [19] In May 2011, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance announced that he would join that organization as a senior fellow. [20]
On July 1, 2012, Johnson joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press as opinion editor for the Free Press editorial page, writing editorials and a weekly column. [12] Under Johnson, the Chattanooga Times Free Press became the largest newspaper in the United States to endorse Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson during the 2012 United States presidential election cycle. [21]
On August 1, 2013 the newspaper announced that Johnson was terminated for violating the newspaper's standards in altering an editorial headline to tell Barack Obama to "Take Your Jobs Plan and Shove It," a play on the classic country music song "Take This Job and Shove It." [22] The newspaper stated the alteration was "inappropriate" and that Johnson did not follow normal editing procedures. [23] Johnson later claimed that his firing was a result of the criticizing Chattanooga's electric company, EPB, one of the newspaper's largest advertisers. [24] "When I explained how EPB scammed taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars...EPB pulled its ads from the paper," Johnson said. "I know the paper was frustrated with losing money because I was willing to speak the truth about bad actors in the community." [24]
Johnson then joined The Washington Times as a columnist, editorial writer and author of the newspaper's weekly "Golden Hammer" column, which exposed an egregious example of wasteful spending of tax dollars. [25] [26] Johnson also hosted a weekly "Golden Hammer" television segment based on the column that was available on some Sinclair Broadcast Group stations' local news broadcasts. [27]
In April 2016, Johnson was named National Director of Protect Internet Freedom, a group formed to push back on new net neutrality rules and federal preemption of state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts. [28] He joined the National Center for Public Policy Research as a senior scholar in 2017. [14]
Johnson again investigated Al Gore's home energy use in a 2017 report written for the National Center for Public Policy Research. [14] According to information obtained through the Nashville Electric Service, energy consumption at Gore's Nashville-area house increased from 2006 to 2017, despite installing 33 solar panels on the home following the initial criticism. [14] In 2017, Gore's home used 21.3 times more energy per month than a typical American household. [14]
Johnson has espoused libertarian and free market positions in his columns, editorials and media interviews.
He has opposed the death penalty and the Patriot Act, spoken out against anti-Muslim bias and criticized Republicans for increasing government spending. [29] [30] [31] He has also written in support of free speech, gay marriage and drug legalization. [32] [33]
Johnson served as commissioner on the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth from 1997 to 2006, and was named to the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 2008. [34]
He currently serves as the public member of the Nevada State Board of Optometry. [35]
He is married to marketing consultant and travel blogger Sarah Reeves Johnson and they live in Las Vegas.
Johnson is credited with starting the Vegas Golden Knights' "Victory Flamingo" tradition, in which fans of the NHL team toss pink plastic flamingos on the ice in celebration of Vegas Golden Knights victories. [36] [37] [38]
Tennessee, officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Tennessee's population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million.
Chattanooga is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. It is located along the Tennessee River, and borders Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee's fourth-largest city and one of the two principal cities of East Tennessee, along with Knoxville. It anchors the Chattanooga metropolitan area, Tennessee's fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area, as well as a larger three-state area that includes Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama.
Albert Arnold Gore Sr. was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1953 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a U.S. Representative from the state's 4th congressional district from 1939 to 1953. He was the father of Al Gore, who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and held Tennessee's other U.S. Senate seat from 1985 to 1993. A native of Granville, Tennessee, Gore graduated from Middle Tennessee State Teachers College and taught school. From 1932 to 1936 he was superintendent of schools for Smith County. He attended the Nashville Y.M.C.A. Night Law School, now the Nashville School of Law, from which he graduated in 1936.
The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 was an Act of the United States Congress, signed by President Richard Nixon, authorizing the formation of joint operating agreements among competing newspaper operations within the same media market area. It exempted newspapers from certain provisions of antitrust laws. Its drafters argued that this would allow the survival of multiple daily newspapers in a given urban market where circulation was declining. This exemption stemmed from the observation that the alternative is usually for at least one of the newspapers, generally the one published in the evening, to cease operations altogether.
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own estimate, he has presented over 1,000 times to audiences worldwide.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is distributed in the metropolitan Chattanooga region of southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It is one of Tennessee's major newspapers and is owned by WEHCO Media, Inc., a diversified communications company with ownership in 14 daily newspapers, 11 weekly newspapers and 13 cable television companies in six states.
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1985 to 1993. Gore was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2000 presidential election, which he lost to George W. Bush.
Robert Phillips Corker Jr. is an American businessman and politician who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 2007 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2015 to 2019.
The Miss Tennessee competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Tennessee in the Miss America Scholarship Competition.
The 3rd congressional district of Tennessee is a congressional district in East Tennessee. It has been represented by Republican Chuck Fleischmann since January 2011. The third district has been centered on Chattanooga since before the Civil War.
Al Gore is an American politician and environmentalist. He was vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 2000, and the co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has been involved with the environmental activist movement for a number of decades and has had full participation since he left the vice-presidency in 2001.
Scott Eugene DesJarlais is an American politician and physician serving as the U.S. representative for Tennessee's 4th congressional district since 2011. The district stretches across East and Middle Tennessee. He is a member of the Republican Party.
John Lawrence Seigenthaler was an American journalist, writer, and political figure. He was known as a prominent defender of First Amendment rights.
EPB of Chattanooga, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is an American electric power distribution and telecommunications company owned by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. EPB serves nearly 180,000 homes and businesses in a 600-square mile area in the greater Chattanooga area and Hamilton County. In 2010, EPB was the first company in the United States to offer 1 Gbit/s high-speed internet over a fiber optic network, over 200 times faster than the national average. As a result, Chattanooga has been called "Gig City" and held up as a national model for deploying the world's fastest internet and the most advanced Smart Grid electric distribution system in the United States. On October 15, 2015, Chattanooga implemented the world's first community-wide 10-gig Internet service.
The Beacon Center of Tennessee, formerly the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR), is a non-profit free-market think tank based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Center's research areas include tax and economic policy, education policy, and healthcare policy. The organization is a member of the State Policy Network.
Tennessee Tax Revolt, Inc.(TTR) is an American anti-tax political advocacy group active in the state of Tennessee.
The 2018 Tennessee gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, to elect the next governor of Tennessee. Incumbent Republican Governor Bill Haslam was term-limited, and is prohibited by the Constitution of Tennessee from seeking a third consecutive term. Republican candidate Bill Lee was elected with 59.6% of the vote, defeating Democratic nominee and former Nashville mayor Karl Dean.
Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg was a newspaper publisher and member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family.
The 1955 Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles football team represented Tennessee Polytechnic Institute—now known as Tennessee Technological University–as a member of the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) during the 1955 college football season. Led by second-year head coach Wilburn Tucker, the Golden Eagles compiled an overall record of 7–3 with a mark of 5–0 in conference play, winning the OVC title. The team's co-captains were Dean Kirk and Joe Mac Reeves.
The 1974 Little All-America college football team, also known as the Small College All-America football team, is composed of college football players from small colleges and universities who were selected by the Associated Press (AP) as the best players at each position. For 1974, the AP selected three teams, each team having separate offensive and defensive platoons.