Think Tank Founder Drew Johnson Running for U.S. House in Nevada, Promises to Leverage Tennessee Experience to Pass ‘Pro Freedom’ Bills

Drew Johnson, who founded and served as the first president of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, formerly the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, told The Tennessee Star he intends to take his years of policy experience to Congress if he wins election to the U.S. House to represent Nevada’s 3rd Congressional district.

Johnson explained to The Star that he started Beacon Center when in his early twenties, and lived and operated from his personal vehicle for the think tank’s first few months of operation. He told The Star he saved American taxpayers around $60 billion and brought about 100 charter schools to Tennessee over his time in public policy.

“I am very proud that I was able to make government less expensive,” Johnson told The Star, adding that “people make better decisions about their lives than government” and “dictating people’s lives at the government level is not the best way to solve things.”

He explained his road to founding Beacon Center, and now running for Congress, began in 1993, when he spent time in post-Soviet Russia as a high school student. The Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991.

Johnson explained that he grew up in Appalachia, “one of the poorest areas in the country,” where his mother worked at Walmart during the day and as a maid at night to earn the family’s keep when he “had the opportunity, through scholarships, some family members, and some work, to go to Russia when I was in high school.”

In Rybink, Russia, Johnson explained he “able to see first hand what communism looks like,” and was stunned by the lack of choice, and more importantly, stories from the locals.

“I was able to talk to kids my age, whose parents or grandparents had gone to gulags, and who didn’t have a choice in where they lived, what they ate. It was just really stunning because, even the little town I’m from, you walk into the Winn-Dixie or the Piggly Wiggly and you had different kinds of cereal. We didn’t have much money but we never starved.”

Johnson explained, “That’s when I really appreciated how fortunate I was to be from America.” The appreciation blossomed into enthusiasm in college, when Johnson said reading “Hayek and Friedman” helped him realize “free markets, free trade, and individual liberty” are what makes “the world a better place.”

He noted that his district is heavily competitive, and contrasted himself strongly to Representative Susie Lee (D-NV-03), who Johnson remarked “is not very engaged in the district.”

Funding Ukraine

Noting Lee’s support for every Ukraine funding bill, Johnson said funding for Ukraine is not on his list of priorities.

“First of all, Putin is a terrible dictator and has no business invading a sovereign nation, period,” Johnson began. He quickly added, “it is not America’s role to fund Ukraine’s war to regain its land from Russia. There are allies on the European continent, there are non profits, that I’m certainly supportive of, that can help Ukraine, but it is not our battle to fight.”

Highlighting allegations of corruption in Ukraine, Johnson continued, “One thing that I think can come from this that would be good, whether this is through EU membership – which I don’t think will happen any time soon – [are] the strings that come with some of the support that other allies are offering Ukraine. I believe [they] can make Ukraine a stronger, more transparent, less corrupt country.”

“That’s one of my big concerns.” Johnson explained, “At the end of the day I want Ukraine to be able to keep its borders, to get Russia out, but I don’t want to give a bunch of Americans’ hard earned dollars to a leader in a government that I don’t believe will spend that money wisely.”

Israel-Hamas Conflict

Johnson told The Star he views “Lee’s Israel votes as pandering” because “at the end of the day, she’s in a party that has done very little to support the Jewish people or Israel.”

“I certainly think that protecting Israel is a vital interest to the United States, but also protecting the Jewish people is [also] the greatest humanitarian concern we have right now.” He stressed that supporting Israel must be done “in a way that doesn’t hurt the taxpayers, but that does preserve Israel.”

He stressed, “Ultimately, they are our greatest ally, and without Israel we are in a world of difference as far as the growth of countries that we don’t want to get more power.”

Indictment of Nevada’s Trump Electors

Johnson said the indictment of six alternative electors who helped former President Donald Trump contest the election results in Nevada is “a political dog and pony show” orchestrated by Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford (D).”

He asserted that Ford “timed it just so that it would hurt Republicans,” and said the attorney general “has a personal vendetta against, not just Trump or these six people, but against the Republican Party.”

“You’ve got to be able to step above partisan politics, and he’s not doing that,” said Johnson. “He’s embarrassing himself, he is embarrassing our state, and I think it’s disgusting that he would use his power to basically create a marketing campaign against Republicans,” he charged, declaring the indictments are “his attempt to use his taxpayer-funded position to attack Republicans.”

Combating Inflation in Nevada

Johnson told The Star that the nationwide inflation crisis is compounded in Nevada due to federal ownership of land in Clark County, and promised to spearhead legislation in the U.S. House to restore the land to private ownership.

“The rate of inflation in Clark County, in the Las Vegas metro area, is much higher even than the rest of the country.” Johnson continued, “But here things are even worse, and one of the reasons why things are worse is because our housing prices, and as a result our rent prices, are skyrocketing because the federal government owns 89 percent of Clark County.”

Johnson continued, “We’re just talking about land in the desert that could be built on, that has access to water, that the federal government is not giving us,” and Nevada suffers from a “completely government-made supply problem where the supply just can’t keep up with the demand.”

He said that Nevada is experiencing a surge in new residents fleeing California, but lamented that the “increase in population has made it so lower income people, young people wanting to start a career and buy a house, just can’t do it in Las Vegas.” He warned, “My concern is, long term, we’re going to make it so that we lose an entire generation of people who could potentially live here because there is no entry level housing right now.”

“One of the things I am going to fight for is to put Nevada’s land back in the hands of Nevadans, and bring some of that land back to us, and back to private ownership, so we can address some of these needs and make housing more affordable.”

Fighting Tech Censorship in Congress

Responding to the Twitter Files and lawsuits that revealed government officials regularly send censorship requests to social media companies, Johnson said the combination of a Republican White House and Congress could resolve the issue.

“It’s completely fine, as far as I’m concerned, for a private business to operate however the heck it wants, as long as government’s not interfering,” Johnson said, explaining that “the issues comes when government dictates to them, and encourages them, to censor certain people.”

He called such a practice “absolutely disgusting,” said said Congress should hold formal hearings with those involved. “Hopefully we’ve got a president in place who, through some of his or her appointments, can help take those findings and apply them appropriately. Working together, I think through an anti-censorship administration, lawmakers in congress who believe it’s not government’s role to violate the First Amendment, we can address online censorship.”

Johnson stressed, “There’s no place for using power gained through political favoritism to silence what Americans see, to silence Americans’ views. It’s just so fundamentally anti-American, it disgusts me.”

Johnson is running for the U.S. House to represent Nevada’s 3rd Congressional district.

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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Drew Johnson” by Drew Johnson and “Beacon Center-Tennessee” is by Beacon Center-Tennessee.

 

 

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