North Country Democrat’s grey-hair drug ring?
Rudy Johnson in a 2010 campaign photo
Sometimes politics and life converge in ways that are just too weird.
Last week, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise reported that former North Country Assembly candidate Rudy Johnson — a Democrat from Malone — had been busted on drug charges.
According to the Enterprise, Johnson “was allegedly found with 100 bags of crack cocaine in the hood of his clothing when police raided a Harlem apartment” late last month.
Johnson, you will remember, ran a respectable and feisty campaign for the 114th Assembly district seat in 2010, coming off well in a debate in Saranac Lake.
(Though my breathless reporting that Johnson had “a very real shot at capturing” a win that year was, in technical, journalistic terms, flat dead wrong.)
Now it has to be said first that the charges against Johnson are just that — charges. He is innocent until proven guilty. The Enterprise’s efforts to contact him to hear his side of the story have gone unanswered.
In fairness to the North Country’s Democratic Party, there’s also no evidence that Johnson continued to be active in regional politics since his defeat in 2010.
Finally, there are some big unanswered questions here. Johnson is 64 years old. And according to the Enterprise’s reporting, the two people arrested with him were ages 68 and 58. Hardly your typical drug ring.
If some part of the allegations here prove accurate, however, the case is deeply sad. Johnson seemed like an engaging, personable guy. As the Enterprise reports, he “campaigned vigorously in Saranac Lake, knocking on doors and attending local events…”
We’ll update this story as more information becomes available.
You sure this isn’t an Onion story because it has all the elements of a good Onion story.
It is sad and I hope there is an explanation, or it is just plain wrong.
However age is not always an impediment to being involved in the drug trade, I think we remember recently a recent chief who was in his late 50’s early 60’s who was busted for drug smuggling.
Organized crime is not limited to the young Brian, or to apolitical types or to males alone. Desperate people do unusual things.
Well, Brian, he did have a “very real shot” because he was on the ballot, and had a fairly active campaign. I was persuaded to write an LTE to the ADE in his behalf, arguing that having a Dem in the Assembly would be better than Republican Janet DuPres, decent as she was. Voters were not persuaded. They apparently were righter than any of us knew.
Baby boomers are known for pushing back the boundaries of youthful behavior, and this is not always a good thing.
He’s innocent until proven guilty, of course.
Maybe this is a lesson that you should drop the silly, pointless predictions (which really shape news rather than just reflecting it) and focus on the real journalism which you’re so much better at.