page_title: John Albert Johnson
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: John Albert Johnson / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Minnesota Governor John Albert Johnson re-election mailer
context_page_description: John Albert Johnson was an American politician. He served in the Minnesota State Senate from January 1897 to January 1901. He was the 16th Governor of Minnesota from January 4, 1905 until his death on September 21, 1909. He was a Democrat.
  He was the first governor born in Minnesota to serve in office. He was only the second non-Republican governor in the previous 50 years and third since statehood. He was also first to serve a full term in the present state capitol, and the first to die in office. Johnson sought the 1908 Democratic presidential nomination but lost to William Jennings Bryan.
context_section_description: The eldest child of an impoverished Swedish family abandoned by an alcoholic father, Johnson left school at 13 to support his mother and siblings. Local Democrats, impressed with the enterprising young store clerk, asked him to join their party and edit the strongly Democratic St. Peter Herald.  His journalistic success attracted statewide attention and fostered political aspirations.
  He failed in early campaigns for state office from his heavily Republican home county but finally was elected to the state senate in 1898, indicating his growing bipartisan appeal. Elected governor three times—in 1904, 1906, and 1908—Johnson's ability to reason and work with legislators of both parties resulted in such reform legislation as reorganization of the state's insurance department to the benefit of policyholders, reduction of railroad passenger and freight rates, and removal of constitutional restraints on the legislature's power to tax.
  Johnson began his third term with reservations. His health was precarious, and he wanted to pursue a promising sideline as a public orator. When he died suddenly at the age of 48 following surgery at the Mayo Clinic, the state's citizens—whom he had served and charmed—were grief-stricken.
caption: Governor Johnson re-election mailing card
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