Yes It Is, It’s True: Rep. Johnson bigly proves me wrong

“I thought I knew you. What did I know?” — The Beatles, “I’m Looking Through You,” 1965 from the album “Rubber Soul.”

The Firesign Theatre, one of my all-time favorite comedy troupes, cut an album in 1974 titled, “Everything You Is Wrong.” That describes very well how I felt early Wednesday morning watching returns come in from the primary election.

I had to plead the same as free market guru Alan Greenspan right after the economic collapse of 2008, “I guess we got it wrong.”

Though I have long fancied myself as an astute observer of the political scene, I wildly missed the mark on the 72nd District State Representative race. I sincerely believed incumbent Republican Steve Johnson was vulnerable in his bid for election to a second term. I wasn’t even close.

Johnson not only prevailed in the primary, he won by a margin I never expected.

It was a little more than a year ago that I penned a column for this on-line rag, maintaining that Johnson was just a lucky young man who surprised nearly everyone by polling 29.3% of the GOP primary voters in August 2016, only slightly more than four other candidates. And in these parts, when you win that first primary, even though not by a majority, but by plurality, you’re good to go for a job that pays $80,000 a year for the next six years.

I suggested Johnson was a very lucky man indeed, because when he decided to run he was unemployed and living in the basement of his parents’ house in Wayland. Furthermore, he had been a volunteer on the staff for the campaign of former State Rep. Cindy Gamrat, who was ousted in disgrace in Lansing in 2015.

Though Johnson’s strongest points were membership in the Wayland Christian Reformed Church, graduating from South Christian High School, Liberty University and serving a four-year hitch in the Air Force, I didn’t think they were enough to carry him to victory in the 2016 primary. But because there were five candidates in that race, his 29.3% was enough to squeak past the other four, who divided up the remaining votes amongst themselves.

I have long railed against our rigged political system, in which a candidate with less than a majority can sing “The Winner Takes it All” just by capturing the most votes in a crowded field. I have proven that every one of our state representatives since the retirement of Paul Hillegonds — Patty Birkholz, Fulton Sheen, Bob Genetski, Ken Yonker and now Johnson, have been elected with less than 50% of the total vote in their first runoff.

Rubbing salt in that political wound is the nasty habit of West Michigan voters to re-elect Republican incumbents, regardless of who’s running. As I have posited here before, “If Republican A. Hitler ran against Democrat J. Christ, A. Hitler would win.”

But a year ago I added up what I believed to be the negatives for Johnson in 2018. His age (only 27 and he looks it), his lack of success in passing any meaningful legislation in his first two years in Lansing, his lack of support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, his somewhat sordid personal history of being unemployed and living in his parents’ basement, and his seemingly narrow Christian conservative backing.

Therefore, I insisted that Johnson would be vulnerable if just one opponent dared to confront him at the polls, rather than the four he narrowly defeated in 2016. I thought my reasoning was sound and my political perception intact.

But the title of an old Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller movie applies: “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!”

Johnson not only won, in the one-one-one contest I said he’d lose, he took all the marbles in a landslide, eclipsing his vote totals from 2016.

My apologies to everyone for misreading the electorate.

Memo to me — The Firesign Theatre Sez: “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”