Jennifer Johnson defeated her husband, David, in a Ward 1 warden position race in Maine on Election Day 2013. The final tally was 127-76 for the wife, who is the Democrat of the union. Here’s the ballot.
The reason for the two running was to ratchet up interest in public affairs — and to showcase that GOP and Dems can get along.For example, despite being registered on different sides of the aisle, both are pro-choice and both believe in marriage equality. He does classify himself as a fiscal conservative, whereas she takes more of an interest in education. She has admitted both that “the empty lines on ballots make me sad” and “if we can get more young people involved in politics, that would be tremendous.”
The couple is now using the attention their race provided to kick off a food pantry in Waterville, ME, an area with a higher-than-average poverty rate.
We’ve seen the spouses-from-opposite-sides-of-the-aisle thing before, most notably here:
It’s more common than you might think for spouses to have differing viewpoints; The Today Show did a feature about one such couple around Election 2012. This couple “finds common ground in local races.” These dynamics also extend to the bedroom. As you might imagine, Reddit has tackled this topic multiple times: here, here, here, and here. As with most things in relationships, the underlying premise/idea of most of these posts is that two people can make it work, no matter how contentious on some issues, if they have core, fundamental elements in common.
And ultimately, don’t both parties sound pretty similar, especially every fourth year?
The Johnsons didn’t campaign against each other, which is likely a good thing given the real reasons they were doing this (and considering that the warden role is often left unfilled). It should also be noted that Jennifer (the victor) is an active volunteer at the elementary school of her children. These are legit people, doing awesome things, in a small community in America. I love it. Ultimately, they both have the same goal: kids should be fed.
