DJ Tablesauce is very high on the chances of Bill Johnson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and businessman who has announced he’s taking on the Rep. Charlie Wilson who wasn’t played by Tom Hanks in Ohio’s 6th congressional district.
This is a district McCain carried narrowly (50 percent to 48 percent), as did Bush in 2004 (51 percent to 49 percent). Wilson won pretty easily last time with 62 percent of the vote, amid strong turnout from Democrats across the state from the Obama wave.
In 2006, Wilson successfully ran a write-in primary campaign after he failed to file the necessary 50 valid signatures to register his candidacy. (He submitted 96 signatures, but only 46 were from the district.) A massive effort by the DCCC and AFL-CIO helped Wilson earn 43,687 write-in votes. This is one of the few districts that have lost population since 2000, according to Barone’s Almanac of American Politics.
At the end of the year, Wilson had $439,603 on hand. A respectable total, but one that might seem insufficient if Johnson really turns into a top-tier challenger.
From Johnson’s campaign:
Bill Johnson, a conservative Republican considering a run for Congress in Ohio, announced he has raised over $107,000 since beginning his exploratory committee in October last year.
Johnson raised over $107,000 in a period of just over three months. That amount includes hundreds of donations from a dozen counties.
In this YouTube video, Johnson talks a bit about the reaction to his campaign so far: