Christine Johnson Won’t Seek Third Term

After four years of legislative service to the state and to Utah’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, Rep. Christine Johnson is stepping aside.

The Salt Lake City Democrat announced earlier this month that she would not seek re-election this November. Her term of office officially ends Dec. 31, 2010. Currently, four candidates have registered to run for her House seat, located in the traditionally Democratic House District 25.

Johnson said that a number of things had lead to her decision to leave, with her daughter’s high school graduation and financial hardship being the main reasons.

“In order to stay in office it depleted my savings,” said Johnson. “I used up what I had in retirement. It’s been financially beyond stressful.”

That financial stress is compounded by two things, said Johnson: The small salary she earns during the General Legislative Session and her inability to find a steady job that would allow her to take 45 days off each year to attend the session. While the financial stress was manageable when Johnson worked in real estate and could set her own hours, the crumbling of the nation’s housing market two years ago has made her situation more difficult.

Further, Utah’s legislators don’t make a lot of money for their efforts. Johnson estimated that she made roughly $14,000 during last year’s session, not nearly enough to provide for her and her teenage daughter.

“That’s fine, except you have to think of how many days and how much time answering e-mails and going to meetings before sessions and working on producing bills [goes along with that],” she said. “It’s just nearly countless time, and I think it all amounts to pennies per hour. That’s all time away from family but also time away from income. As the only single parent in the legislature, I thought there were just times I couldn’t make it for one more month. I’ve had supportive family and friends. I’ve been lucky in that regard but I just can’t push my luck anymore. I want to help my daughter in college and it’s not fair to her to say I can’t help you with your tuition because I’m in the legislature.”

It’s a situation, said Johnson, in which many legislators have found themselves, especially given the slumping economy. She noted that more lawmakers are planning on resigning this year as well, and for the same reasons.

“We’re losing more good people than we know this year, including a lot of moderate Republicans,” said Johnson, adding that these individuals had yet to make announcements. “Two Republicans are quitting because they’re employers said, ‘Do you want to have a job, or do you want to play legislator?’” Staying in office is difficult financially, she added, unless “you are self-employed or independently wealthy or a property owner — we have so many developers [on the Hill] — or part of an industry where they see having you there as advantageous, like insurance companies.”

Johnson ran for and won the hotly contested District 25 seat in 2006, after its holder, Ross Romero, made a successful bid for a State Senate seat. Since then, she has been an outspoken advocate for gay and transgender rights on the House floor. In 2008 and 2009 she authored and ran a bill that sought to add sexual orientation and gender identity to statewide housing and employment nondiscrimination laws. In both years, the bills failed to make it to the House floor for debate.

Johnson withdrew the bill early in this year’s session along with a resolution calling for the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which bans gays and lesbians from serving openly. She and other lawmakers withdrew all pro-gay bills as part of a legislative “truce” in which House and Senate Republicans also agreed to withdraw bills that would have struck down Salt Lake City’s recently-passed fair housing and workplace ordinances which cover gay and transgender people. The controversial cease-fire earned Johnson criticism from several members of Utah’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community who thought Johnson had moved without sufficient community input, and that the truce had derailed serious attempts to secure some statewide protections.

During her tenure, Johnson was also particularly proud of a number of other bills, including environmentally-friendly legislation which required Utah manufacturers to reduce the phosphorous content of detergents by 2010 and a bill that created a fund to retrofit older school bus engines to cut down on pollution.

“I think that some people on the other side of the aisle, and certainly my opponent in the last election, wanted to frame me as a single-issue person, that issue being my sexual orientation,” Johnson told QSaltLake in an interview last year. “That’s not the case. I feel a great deal of responsibility to my LGBT community. But this session, only 20 percent of the bills I’m running have to do with LGBT issues.”

In a statement issued earlier this month, however, Johnson criticized the Utah Legislature for its treatment of Utah’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.

“For the past four years, I have stood with my colleagues each morning of session, placed my hand over my heart and pledged ‘liberty and justice for all’ and yet, repeatedly witnessed blatant disregard of those so in need of equal protections in the name of ‘family values,’” she wrote. “Ironically, some of the most dedicated partners, parents and families within Utah fall under non-traditional definitions. There is no city nor county in which these families do not exist and it is reprehensible that we continue to ignore them.”

Still, Johnson said that many legislators on both sides of the aisle stood with her in her efforts to pass pro-gay and transgender bills. Of these, she said she will particularly miss her seat mate Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, Rep. Tim Cosgrove, D-Murray, and Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, who became a friend shortly after Johnson became a surrogate mother for a gay male couple last year. She also said she would miss former Senator and House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, who resigned March 13 after confessing to skinny dipping with a female teenager 25 years ago, and paying the woman to keep quiet about the incident in 2002.

“It’s so easy for us to judge him, but he was on our side for LGBT equality,” said Johnson. “It was something he had to be more discreet about, but he was on our side. And I hate to see him go.”

With her daughter heading to college and her baby due in June, Johnson said that she no longer sees a reason to stay in Utah. Currently, she is applying only for jobs in other states.

“I’ve made a legitimate attempt to make Utah my home and I just don’t feel like I’m at home here,” she said, noting that she missed the East Coast where she grew up.

No matter where her job search takes her, however, Johnson said that she will never stop fighting for gay rights.

“My passion is with securing rights for LGBT people, and that’s not a fight I plan on giving up wherever I go,” she said.