ADECA director Johnson running for Ala. governor

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Bill Johnson resigned from Gov. Bob Riley’s Cabinet on Friday to jump into the crowded Republican field for governor.

Johnson, a former Birmingham City Council member, was appointed by Riley to lead the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs in 2005. Johnson said he had not planned to leave so early. But Johnson said Riley read an Associated Press story Wednesday about Johnson’s interest in running for governor and “he gave me until today to make up my mind.“

“I’m running for governor,“ the 50-year-old Prattville resident said in an interview shortly after his resignation.

Johnson said he plans a formal campaign kickoff in a few weeks.

The governor said Johnson “has done a great job at ADECA,“ an agency that manages more than $200 million in federal grant money each year and has 230 employees. Riley immediately promoted assistant director Doni M. Ingram to be director.

Johnson joins State Treasurer Kay Ivey, former Chief Justice Roy Moore, state Rep. Robert Bentley, former two-year college Chancellor Bradley Byrne, and Greenville businessman Tim James in the GOP primary set for June 2010.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis and state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks are running as Democrats.

Johnson is a new name to many voters, but he is known by government officials and community leaders in every county because of his job at ADECA distributing money to local governments and nonprofit agencies.

“I am what people call a compassionate conservative. I believe in helping people, but I don’t always believe government is the way to help them,“ Johnson said Friday.

As ADECA director, Johnson has worked to develop partnerships with faith-based and community groups to address problems. That includes helping prisoners get housing and jobs upon their release so that they don’t commit new crimes, and working to improve the quality of life in economically depressed areas of the Black Belt.

Johnson said he would take the same broad approach if elected governor. “I’ve seen firsthand how government and citizens can work together to improve the quality of life for our residents and businesses,“ he said.

This will be Johnson’s second race for a statewide office, but his first in Alabama.

He made an unsuccessful bid as a Libertarian for the U.S. Senate in Missouri in 1994, getting only about 5 percent of the vote in a race won by Republican John Ashcroft. In that race, Johnson adopted the Libertarian platform of legalizing marijuana and prostitution. That platform repeatedly came up in Johnson’s future political ventures and was used in a Democratic ad to attack Riley in his re-election bid in 2006.

Each time it came up, Johnson said he personally opposed the legalization of marijuana and prostitution, but was running under the Libertarian banner.

In 1997, he was elected to the Birmingham City Council for one four-year term. He served as the grass-roots coordinator for Riley’s campaigns for governor in 2002 and 2006. He joined ADECA in 2003 as assistant director, and Riley named him director in 2005.

His wife, Kathy Johnson, heads the Alabama Broadband Initiative, which Riley created to help make Internet broadband service available statewide.