By Chad Selweski
Chad.selweski@macombdaily.com
@cbsnewsman
Lon Johnson, the challenger to Michigan Democratic Party
Chairman Mark Brewer’s re-election bid, has a spotty voting record in Michigan
and has switched residences several times over the past dozen years, documents
show.
According to election records, Johnson, now a resident of
Kalkaska County, has routinely ignored voting in local elections for municipal
offices and has voted only once over the past decade in a school election. But
his biggest transgression, from the standpoint of loyal Democrats who will vote
on the chairmanship on Feb. 23, may be his failure to vote in the November 2010
election when Republican Gov. Rick Snyder was chosen by the Michigan electorate
as the successor to Democrat Jennifer Granholm.
In an interview with The Macomb Daily, Johnson explained
that he had moved to Washington in the late spring or early summer of 2008 to
live with Juliann Smoot, who later became his wife.
“I was still living in Washington, D.C., at the time
(2010) with my wife. Frankly, I was uncertain whether I could vote in Michigan,
so I didn’t,” said Johnson, who also did not vote in the August 2010 primary in
which Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero was elected as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.
Other votes missed by Johnson: the Aug. 2008 primary, and
the presidential primary and August primary of 2004.
Macomb County Democratic Party Chairman Ed Bruley, one of
Brewer’s staunchest supporters, said he believes the challenger’s voting
history should give Johnson backers pause.
“He wants to lead the party in 2014 against a Republican
governor who he helped elect by not voting,” said Bruley, a former county
commissioner.
In an increasingly intense chairmanship battle with 18-year
incumbent Brewer, Johnson, 41, said that hardball politics may be at play
behind the scenes but questions about his voting record are legitimate. As for
his failure to vote in local elections, Johnson said frequent traveling and moving
from place to place meant that “I most likely wasn’t informed at the time.”
In fact, Johnson has been on the move since late 2001. In
December of that year, he wrapped up his service to the Democratic Party at the
national level and the Al Gore presidential campaign and moved back to
Michigan, to his hometown of Rockwood in the Downriver area.
But he soon returned to Washington for another stint in
party politics in 2003 and in 2004 served as the Michigan director of a
Democratic campaign offshoot, America Coming Together.
In 2004, Johnson said he purchased a Third Street home in
Royal Oak near the downtown area. But in 2005-06 he was in Iraq, working for
the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit group. When he returned from
Iraq in the summer of 2006 he lived in a Kalkaska area home built by his
grandfather and handed down to his brother.
In the spring of 2008, his future wife, Smoot, landed a
job as a premier fundraiser for the Obama presidential campaign and he moved in
with her.  She later was appointed as the
White House social
secretary and as a deputy assistant to the president in 2010-11. Johnson was
working for a venture capital firm based in Nashville, Tenn.
In the summer of 2011, Johnson said he “snapped up” a
home for sale near the residence his grandfather built, on Bass Lake. According
to election records, he first registered to vote in Kalkaska County in
September 2011. Some 14 months later he narrowly lost a bid for a state House
seat centered in the Kalkaska area after waging a high-stakes campaign funded
by donors from across the nation.
At his Royal Oak home, which he still owns, Johnson was
playing the role of landlord in recent years. According to 44th
District Court records, Lonnie Barton Johnson was issued nine citations over a
2-year period for building code violations at his modest bungalow.  The chairmanship candidate said the
violations involved minor repairs ordered by the court on the exterior of the
house and garage.
He was fined four separate times by the court for a total
of $620, according to 44th District judicial records.
Those documents show that in the fall of 2011 Johnson,
after experiencing two run-ins with the city’s code enforcement officer in
quick succession, listed his address as an apartment in Chicago, home of the
Obama re-election headquarters. At that time, his wife had been appointed as a
deputy campaign manager for the president.
“My wife was presented with a tremendous opportunity to
work for our president in a major way,” he explained. “So, we led a lifestyle
that wasn’t conducive to stability.”
Meanwhile, the challenger continues to gain ground day by
day in his bid to oust Brewer, who was first elected state party chair in 1995.
On Thursday,
Johnson announced that he has wrapped up the support of: Sandra Hughes O’Brien, chair of
the Michigan Democratic Hispanic/Latino Caucus; Curtis Hertel, former state Speaker
of the House; Alma Wheeler Smith, former state senator; former congressman Bart
Stupak; Mark Bernstein, U- M Board of Regents; Joel Ferguson, MSU Trustee;
state Sen. Bert Johnson; Dan Martin of the Ferndale Area Democratic Club; Chris
Kolb of the Michigan Environmental Council; and the Wyandotte Democratic Club.
Johnson’s candidacy took off in
mid-February when U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Sander Levin
and the four other House Democrats from Michigan endorsed him. Earlier this
week, Brewer suffered another blow when 11 top Democrats in Macomb County,
where the incumbent has political roots dating to 1983, joined County Executive
Mark Hackel in backing Johnson.
About
1,500 delegates will converge on Cobo Center in Detroit for the Feb. 23 state
convention, where the 2013-14 party chairman will be elected. Brewer has tried
to counter Johnson’s onslaught by wrapping up support from grassroots party
leaders at the congressional district, county and caucus level.