American Majority-Trained Chris Johnson Wins MS House with 83%

Chris Johnson ran for District 87 of the Mississippi House of Representatives as a Republican and won with 80.3% on November 3. He has never before held elected office.

Prior to politics, Chris’s dedication had been to business. There were several factors that drove Chris towards a political career. However, the primary cause and the one closest to Chris’s heart was his concern for liberty in the world of private business.After graduate school, Chris purchased a business to which he wholeheartedly dedicated his time and energy. He received a call one day from the Mississippi Department of Employment Security asking to see his payroll. That day pushed Chris to see what the government does in regards to business and made him want to do something about it.

He wants to offer people solutions to things that are seen as the government’s problem but shouldn’t have to be.

“If we have money, they want it,” Chris said. “But there are a lot of ways we can use technology to avoid the nasty bureaucratic stuff such as regulations, requirements, and continuous audits for them to decide who’s qualified and who’s not. The bureaucracy takes resources from your business and is detrimental to the economy.”

Chris focused his campaign message on the preservation and rights of small businesses.

“At a state level, there’s a constant problem with employment security; the bureaucracy is always requesting information,” Chris said.

Chris operated largely from a training course he took from American Majority President Matt Robbins in Jackson, Mississippi this year. Chris still has many handwritten notes from the course that he refers to, along with American Majority’s online resources.

“My perceptions of what campaigning was and what it actually is were much different from each other,” said Chris.

One of the most important things Chris learned was to focus on the people most likely to vote in the election. With this in mind, Chris put most of his effort into the primary. He learned how to keep it short at the door without being rude and that spending twenty minutes in a deep conversation at each door is not an effective use of time.

One of Chris’s greatest challenges was to fight the urge to react emotionally when he was attacked.

“Bringing personal emotions into the campaign is a mistake,” said Chris. “I saw one campaign which fell apart after it felt under pressure and chose to attack another candidate.”

Chris has prepared for a paradigm shift when enters the office, realizing that his perception of what the government is doing and what it is actually doing may be different. However, Chris feels that the process has been a blessing. He believes that it was the hard work of his team and his opportunity to run in a primarily Republican county, which made his election successful.