Fighting for our
Mississippi values
Cliff Johnson is running for Congress so he can bring our Mississippi Values to Washington.
Cliff has spent his career fighting bullies and standing up for the vulnerable. This campaign is built on grassroots supporters like you, chipping in what they can to help us build a better Mississippi. Can you chip in a donation of any amount to our people-powered campaign to elect Cliff Johnson?
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About Cliff Johnson
Cliff Johnson has spent his career speaking truth to power. He’s a fifth generation Mississippian who lives in rural Lafayette County, Mississippi with his wife of 35 years, two pigs (Pumpkin and Butterbean), 11 chickens, and one large lazy dog, Lady. Cliff was shaped by the lessons he learned from his parents and from the church – lessons that taught him right from wrong, the importance of service, and that we all owe a duty to others in our community.
These are values that Mississippians like Cliff have lived by for generations. These values shaped people like Cliff’s grandparents, who were Mississippi sharecroppers. They shaped his dad, who is a disabled Vietnam veteran who served and sacrificed for his country, and his mom, who instilled these values in her children and gave them the confidence to be whatever they wanted to be.
Cliff took these lessons to heart and knew that he was called to speak truth to bullies who beat up on the vulnerable – and that is exactly what he has spent his career doing.
Standing Up for Us
A graduate of Mississippi College and the Columbia University School of Law, Cliff has spent his career standing up to people who abuse their power. He worked at the Department of Justice in Mississippi, where he coordinated the Government's response to health care fraud enforcement and received the Integrity Award from the United States Department of Health and Human Services for his work handling fraud cases against large health care providers. After his time at DOJ, he founded a law firm that represented workers taken advantage of by their employers and filed whistleblower cases throughout the country, protecting vital federal programs from those cheating the system.
Now, at the McArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi Law School, Cliff works to reform a broken criminal legal system that punishes the poor and too often makes us less safe. He's shut down debtors’ prisons where poor people have been jailed illegally because they simply cannot afford the misdemeanor fines, successfully fought to end the unconstitutional practice of locking poor Mississippians up for months and years without a lawyer, and took on a private prison on behalf of hundreds of correctional officers forced to clock out but go back to work without pay.
He teaches and supervises students who work side-by-side with him on the Center’s active litigation and advocacy efforts, passing along to the next generation those same values he was taught – the duty to serve and fight for the most vulnerable amongst us.
A Better Mississippi
Cliff knows that if we’re honest about what is happening in America today, we have to admit that core Mississippi values have been forgotten by politicians in Washington DC. They are more interested in dividing us with policy that punishes Mississippi families, than living the values we were all taught.
Over the last few months, DC politicians have slashed health care from middle and working class families to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. They’ve continued to watch as hard working families work 2 and 3 jobs, while still living in poverty, even as big corporations make record profits. They continue to watch on as a broken criminal justice system locks up more of our people than any nation – disproportionately the poor and people of color, while refusing to fund reentry and substance abuse programs to actually get at the core causes of crime and poverty.
Cliff isn’t afraid to speak truth to power on these issues because he’s been doing it his whole life. He knows that everyone in Washington DC is at fault because too many D.C. politicians are more interested in maintaining the status quo than living the values we all know will lift up families and give every hard working Mississippian the shot they deserve in life.
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