The Great Gadfly

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research bills itself as a nonpartisan, free-market think tank, implying serious public-policy study. But it actually spends most of its time sniping at Democrats to please right-wing funders.

It's run by Drew Johnson, a skinny twentysomething who makes an unlikely saboteur. Until a few days ago, when he visited the orthodontist, his smile revealed a mouthful of braces. Wearing the stylish suits he favors (he's known as GQ Drew on the blogosphere), he could pass for a high school kid on prom night.

Johnson has dispatched aides with scanners and copiers to state offices to demand immediate access to documents that just might (but rarely do) reveal terrible misdeeds. On fishing expeditions under Tennessee's open records law, he's ordered up thousands of emails from state agencies. Frustrated state workers say fulfilling his requests wastes untold hours. Johnson alone is responsible for 16 percent of all requests to the administration this year, officials say.

Bredesen's aides say Johnson tramples across the line between legitimate scrutiny and harassment. Johnson may insist he plays no favorites, but his center is one of many cookie-cutter outfits across the country working hard to pester Democrats to exasperation. Funded by conservative foundations—which are, in turn, backed by big corporations—these groups are integral parts of the right-wing echo chamber, with their leaders masquerading as independent experts on radio talk shows and elsewhere in the media.

"He's a partisan nitwit who basically spends all his time dreaming up ways to terrorize rank-and-file state employees," says Bredesen senior adviser Will Pinkston. "Sad way to feed an outsized ego."

Johnson's mocking retort: "Waaaah."

He remains brashly defiant, though prone to saying things he might regret. In an interview, he calls one state information officer "nuttier than squirrel shit," makes a sexist remark about another one (Johnson thinks she's hot), calls certain of Tennessee's larger media outlets "crappy, hack newspapers," and casts himself as the savior of free people everywhere.

His center's main purpose? "To advance liberty." (We're not making this up.) He is, in many ways, the very portrait of youthful self-importance.

In Johnson's eyes, "Any decent investigative journalism that you've seen over the past year" is due to his research. Moreover, "Media in Tennessee would be in a much sorrier state" if not for him.

"People literally pay less in tax money to the state of Tennessee because of what we've been able to uncover," he boasts.

His is an amazing up-by-the-bootstraps success story, if he doesn't mind saying so. The son of a "redneck momma" who works at a Wal-Mart in East Tennessee, he interned during college for the American Enterprise Institute and worked afterward for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation—both right-wing outfits—before deciding to strike out on his own in Tennessee. He says he was literally homeless in Nashville, living out of an old Toyota and sleeping on friends' sofas until he could rummage up enough grant money to get started.

And give credit where it's due. With help from Trent Seibert, a former Tennessean reporter who worked for the center for a year, Johnson has delivered some good licks:

• He gave WTVF-Channel 5's Phil Williams the video of Revenue Department employees mocking taxpayers in a skit they performed for co-workers at a retreat. That was a gift that arrived at the center from an anonymous source, Johnson says. He's still badgering the department for internal emails that might reveal more shenanigans. He's specifically demanding emails containing the word "fuckfest."

• He uncovered evidence that the Bredesen administration was playing a shell game with funding sources for "Bredesen's Bunker," the underground banquet hall first lady Andrea Conte insists on building at the governor's mansion. In the process, he found embarrassing emails from the demure first lady denouncing "partisan political hacks" acting out of "meanness of spirit and selfishness." Who could she be referring to?

• He got in Conte's face again when he found out she hadn't sold very many of the Christmas ornaments that she ordered to raise private money for the mansion's remodeling. "What's next?" he asked. "The first lady going door-to-door selling Mary Kay?"

• Johnson also filed the ethics complaint that led to a record $120,000 fine against Jerry Cooper for making personal use of campaign cash. The pilfering itself came to light during the Democratic state senator's trial on unrelated charges. Cooper wound up resigning because he couldn't afford to pay the fine.

But Johnson's greatest claim to fame was uncovering Al Gore's electric bills, revealing that the global warming warrior wastes a lot of kilowatts at his Belle Meade mansion. The day that press release went out, the center's website was inundated with 2 million hits. Johnson and Seibert did 120 radio interviews and 12 on national TV. Johnson then teamed up with another gang of wiseacres to sail a hot-air balloon over Gore's house.

"I just believe so strongly that there needs to be an organization that fights for taxpayers and fights for liberty," he says. "It's all just kind of snowballed from that."

Donations from individuals and foundations have soared since the Gore story. Johnson estimates he'll rake in around $400,000 this year, almost double last year's take. He has six workers now, and is paying himself $60,000 a year, enough to finally afford braces for those crooked teeth.