The American Independent: Meet an anti-democracy Senate candidate: Ron Johnson
Josh Israel
09/13/2022
Key Points:
- Over 12 years in the Senate, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has consistently opposed legislation that protects voting rights or supports American democracy.
- Johnson, considered one of the Senate’s most unpopular members, previously pledged to only serve two terms — even sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment to set limits for the amount of time — senators to 12 years total, is seeking a third term this November.
- Johnson will face current Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for his Senate seat, in November. Barnes has released a detailed “plan for democracy” explaining how he plans to make voting rights a priority.
- Barnes’ proposals include a new voting rights act, a ban on partisan gerrymandering, and a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that allowed unlimited “independent” campaign spending.
- Johnson has fought against that policy and others that advocates argue will ensure fair and free elections. The nonpartisan reform group End Citizens United rated the Wisconsin Senator with an “F” on their May 2022 anti-corruption and voting rights scorecard, observing, “From protecting our elections, to rooting out corruption, to increasing transparency, to strengthening government ethics, Johnson voted against every effort to protect our democracy.”
- Johnson has spent much of his 2022 campaign complaining about all the “dark money” being spent against him by progressive groups despite repeatedly opposing campaign finance transparency policies.
- In October 2010, Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board that he was for the DISCLOSE Act, a bill to ensure that political groups reveal the names of the donors who bankroll their campaign ads, But by July 2012, he had joined 43 other Senate Republicans to filibuster and effectively kill that legislation.
- In 2022, he opposed the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which End Citizens United described as “a commonsense anti-corruption” law had it gone into effect.
- In August 2021, he voted against holding debates on the Senate floor for S.1 – the For the People Act — which would have strengthened voting rights and implemented campaign finance reforms. He also voted against bringing up a similar proposal — the Freedom to Vote Act — two months later. In November, he additionally voted against advancing S. 4, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have restored and updated provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- In a January 2022 radio interview with GOP megadonor John Catsimatidis, Johnson argued that voting rights protections are no longer even needed. “Show me somebody in the recent past that has wanted to vote that couldn’t. We’ve made voting incredibly easy. Nobody’s suppressing the vote,” he claimed. In the same interview, he also claimed that “There’s nothing racist about voter ID.” Johnson has frequently pushed for strict photo identification laws, calling them “Common sense” policies.
- “Americans are not looking for election reform,” Johnson claimed in the same interview with Catsimatidis, “It’s just something Democrats want to pass … so they can literally turn America into a socialist paradise.”
- In the 2020 election, Trump lost the vote, both nationwide and amongst Wisconsinites, but Johnson tried to help Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results and avoid certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
- Johnson used hearings at the end of 2020 to examine “irregularities in the 2020 election,” signed a letter with other Republicans demanding the “Electoral Commission” to audit the election results, and once again tried to subvert the results by sending unlawful electors prior to the official counting of Electoral College results.
- Johnson played down his involvement, telling CNN, “Literally, my involvement lasted seconds.” Despite that, he hired one of the fraudulent electors from Wisconsin to work on his campaign staff. As recently as August 2021, Johnson still supported proposals of an audit of the already certified elections results – though he has conceded that there was “nothing obviously skewed about the results.”
- Despite downplaying his role in the insurrection, Johnson voted to acquit Trump for inciting the attacks and voted against establishing the January 6 Committee, the bipartisan House commission that has investigated what happened. In an interview in March 2021, Johnson said the insurrectionists “were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.”
- At a June 2021 hearing, Johnson opposed enfranchising D.C. residents and suggesting that they did not need to be citizens because they are wealthy and mostly vote Democratic. “There’s certainly poverty here, but this District is not made of many disadvantaged individuals,” he inaccurately claimed. “This is an elite group of people here, they have a vested interest in the power of the federal government. To me, this just seems like a naked power grab.”
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