Bruce Johnson (Ohio Politician) - Enters The Ohio Senate

Enters The Ohio Senate

Johnson was appointed by the Senate Republican caucus to the Third District Ohio Senate seat in the 120th General Assembly effective March 1, 1994, replacing Theodore W. Gray, a Republican of Upper Arlington, who resigned after forty-three years in the Senate. The seat represented the eastern third of Franklin County, the suburbs of Columbus, the state capital. The district included all of the municipalities of Bexley, Canal Winchester, Obetz, New Albany, Whitehall, Gahanna, Reynoldsburg and Westerville, part of Worthington and a sliver of the northern edge of the county. Johnson took the oath from Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer.

Johnson ran for a full term that year and was unopposed in the May 3 primary, after Linda S. Reidelbach, an unsuccessful independent candidate for Congress in the 15th District in 1992 who also failed to win appointment to Gray's seat, withdrew from the race despite filing nominating petitions. Johnson received 15,271 votes in the primary. On November 8, he faced Democratic nominee Christina L. Cox, a 38-year-old township trustee in Blendon Township. Cox had also been unopposed in her primary. Cox filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission because Johnson ran television advertisements calling for voters to "re-elect" him. "A key issue in this campaign is the fact that Bruce Johnson has never been elected to anything," Cox told The Columbus Dispatch. "He was appointed by the Downtown influence peddlers, but he's trying to make the people think they elected him." Johnson won the endorsement of The Columbus Dispatch, which described him as "a longtime political activist within the Republican Party" with "a firm grasp of legal, tax and job-development issues." Johnson won the general election, 53,290 (61.78%) to 38,974 (38.22%).