Mike Johnson — who has run unopposed 3 times — once said democracy is 'not always a good thing'

31 October 2023

Older comments from newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) have recently surfaced, showing the Republican lawmaker's disdain for democracy.

The New Republic unearthed a 2019 address Johnson gave to the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana. In that speech, the GOP congressman described the concept of democratic government as "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner."

"You don't want to be in a democracy," Johnson said at the time. "Majority rule: Not always a good thing."

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Johnson's apparent disdain for democracy was also noted by scholar Jeff Sharlet, who is an expert on militias and the far-right. Sharlet retweeted what he called a "vital thread" in which another X user posted a series of tweets remarking on how Johnson has actually never once had to win a close election.

"[I]n [Johnson's] political career, he has not participated in a democracy," X user David Pepper wrote. "He is actually the perfect example of how in today’s gerrymandered world, people can ride to the highest levels of power without being in a real election their entire careers. Which means they can be complete extremists and never face accountability for it."

Publicly available election data on Ballotpedia backs up Pepper's claims: In 2015, Johnson was actually sworn in on February 3, weeks prior to the February 21 special election for a vacant seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, as he ran unopposed. That fall, Johnson was once again unopposed in the October 24 blanket primary, giving Johnson a full term in the Louisiana House of Representatives without once facing any primary or general election opposition.

The closest election Johnson had was likely in 2016, in the Republican primary for Louisiana's 4th congressional district. But even then, he won with a remarkably low vote share. According to Ballotpedia, Johnson came in second place in an eight-way jungle primary with less than 25% of all votes cast, but then beat his Democratic opponent in the general election with more than 65% of the vote.

Johnson's lopsided victory in 2016, along with other similar one-sided routs of his Democratic opponents in 2018, 2020, and 2022 (in which he ran unopposed yet again without even appearing on the ballot) could be attributed to Louisiana Republicans' gerrymandering of his district. In 2019, the University of Notre Dame conducted a study on gerrymandering in Louisiana, and found that the practice of "cracking" and "packing" — in which majority-Black communities are "cracked" apart to weaken their vote share and "packed" into heavily Republican areas — was most prominent in Johnson's district.

"Cracking is most evident in Districts 4 and 5, where the black and liberal vote in the northern corners of the state is diluted by districting these parishes together with those possessing a high percentage of Republican and white voters," the study read. "What results is a state with five Republican [districts] and one Democratic district."

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