Johnson Defies Common Labels

The Birmingham Post Herald
by Elaine Witt

We walked out of John's Restaurant past a fancy art deco building. Councilman Bill Johnson pointed skyward.

"Did you know there's a disco up there?" he asked. I looked up, past the dark marble columns and the florid plaster friezes, and my mind began to open. Could it be that Johnson, the Birmingham City Council member with the Jim Carrey smile, could dance?

I pictured him, limber in his clean white shirt and subtle plaids, back flipping in the center of some happy dance floor.

Or, maybe not.

"I just like to go dancing with my wife," Johnson demurred when I pressed him later for details.

The son of an Army air traffic controller, he's already been a goat farmer, a Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri and a campaign consultant for a congressional candidate allied with the religious right...

He owed his 1997 council election largely to anti-Richard Arrington political movement surrounding Southside Councilman Jimmy Blake. And yet, in his one and a half years on the council, Johnson has voted with Mayor Arrington and his Jefferson County Citizen's Coalition on some key issues, including the use of the Birmingham Water Works' assets to borrow funds for school improvements.

Today, he openly admires Arrington, the city's first black mayor, who plans to leave office early this year before completing his fifth term.

"Like most white council candidates, I ran against Mayor Arrington," he told me.

Then he took possession of an office in City Hall began to notice Arrington's long hours and pragmatic style.

"I've admired what he's done about bringing businesses into the city and economic development. I guess the main thing I didn't realize is, he's a really intelligent guy. I guess I should have figured it. And the line he's had to walk, balancing the interests of white businesses and the black community - it's a hard road to walk."

With a district that is 52 percent black, Johnson has had to walk his own line.

He votes a good deal with the council's white minority, of which he is part. And he has challenged the Coalition-backed majority on some key

He favors an elected school board, for example, and he personally brought to light the background of Tom Drilias, whom Council President William Bell and his allies have selected to promote a city-wide millennium festival. (Drilias pleaded guilty to misdemeanor violations of Wisconsin's trade and consumer pro tection laws after a festival he pro moted in Milwaukee failed to meet expenses.)

And yet, Johnson has taken on race relations as a personal and political cause. He is a guiding force behind this year's plans to form the Birmingham Human Relations Commission. He helped craft a plan for minimizing .the impact of a recent Ku Klux Klan rally in downtown Birmingham. His current dream is to bring South African leader Nelson Mandela to Birmingham to address the Committee for Economic and Cultural Development.

Johnson says he doubts he'll ever have the hubris to believe he could be mayor. "I don't think a white candidate could win," he said.

And yet, his timing and diplomacy, at times, are impeccable.

At the Birmingham Urban League's recent Multicultural Friendship Lunch eon, for example, he showed up wanting to buy a ticket and ended up on the podium giving the welcome.

When he votes with the Coalition, opponents grumble that he's been bought off with promises of improvements in his district.

"You'll know I've been bought off when the gym wall and the Hawkins (Recreation) Center is fixed," Johnson, flashing that Ace Ventura grin, responded to that charge.

He hops across the gulf between the Arrington-Bell camp and the opposing forces headed by Blake. None of them quite trust him.

"I have asked to go to a Coalition meeting about five times, but I haven't been invited," he said. "I feel like I represent everybody in this city, and there's not any group I don't want to be able to get along with."

Elaine Witt's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in the Birmingham Post-Herald.

Elaine Witt can be reached at 325-3197 or ewitt@postherald

Copyright, article by The Birmingham Post-Herald, 1999. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.