SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Former Sen. Tim Johnson, a centrist who was the last Democrat to hold statewide office in South Dakota and who was adept at securing federal funding for projects back home during his nearly three decades in Washington, has died. He was 77.
Johnson, who was first elected to Congress in 1986 and retired from the Senate in 2015, died Tuesday night of complications from a recent stroke, family friend Steve Hildebrand said in a news release. He was surrounded by family.
“Tim always quipped that neither the left, nor the right, had a monopoly on all of the good ideas, but that working together, we can find common ground for the good of our country," Johnson’s family said in the news release. "In his work and life, Tim showed us never to give up.”
That resilience was tested in 2006. Just a month after Democrats reclaimed the Senate by a one-vote margin, Johnson became disoriented during a media conference call and underwent emergency brain surgery. He’d suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage, sparking what many called an unseemly round of speculation in Washington about which party would control the next Senate.
But he returned to Washington nine months later, physically weaker yet mentally sharp. He later joked by opening his first post-surgery media conference call with: "As I was saying... ."
A fourth-generation South Dakotan, Johnson was known for his steady manner, his unpredictable votes and his ability to secure federal funding for his state, including money that helped pay for the University of South Dakota medical science complex.
Democrats never could take his votes for granted. Johnson bucked his party by backing bans on abortions later in pregnancies and flag desecration. He also voted to confirm U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.
And in one of his career's defining moments, Johnson voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq, even though he had a deeply personal reason to oppose it. His son, Brooks, was a 32-year-old staff sergeant with the Army's 101st Airborne Division and would be among the first sent to the region.
"I talked to Brooks prior to this vote and his response was, 'Dad, you do what is right for the country and I'll do what is right as a soldier,'" Johnson recalled. "I said on the (Senate) floor that it's very likely I would be sending my own son into combat."
Brooks, who also served in Bosnia, Kosovo and South Korea, returned safely after serving in the Middle East.
Drey Samuelson, who served as Johnson’s chief of staff for all 28 years he served in Congress, said Johnson appealed to Republicans and Democrats alike because he worked hard and was willing to listen to both sides.
“He never saw himself as the Democratic member in Congress from South Dakota,” Samuelson said. “He saw himself as the congressman or senator from South Dakota, regardless of people’s party.”
The former senator joked about his reputation for being reserved.
"I know I get a rap as this sort of dour Scandinavian, but I think that we Scandinavians have a sense of humor, too," Johnson told The Associated Press in 2002. "I enjoy life. I think there are a lot of things in life that are fun and we can joke about. It would be a sad life for anybody who can't laugh, and laugh at himself as well."
In December 2006, Johnson suffered bleeding in his brain caused by a congenital malformation. His ailment raised the possibility that, were he to be incapacitated, South Dakota's Republican governor would appoint a Republican successor and return the Senate, then controlled by Democrats 51-49, to GOP control.
Johnson returned to his Senate office in September 2007, using a scooter and with his speaking slow and slurred. Cameras crowded around as he scooted through the door alongside South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a Republican, and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a Democrat. Staffers cheered as he entered the office.
He continued to recover and went on to win reelection. But in 2013, as South Dakota turned sharply Republican, he announced he planned to retire.
At the time, he said it had become harder and harder over his 28 years in the House and Senate to strike bipartisan compromise, as winning elections came to overshadow everything else.
"We have lost our way," Johnson lamented in his parting speech on Dec. 11, 2014.
Born in Canton, South Dakota, Johnson earned a bachelor's degree from the University of South Dakota, where he also met his wife, Barbara Brooks of Sioux Falls. Johnson went on to earn a master's degree in public administration and a law degree from the university.
Johnson started a law practice in Vermillion in 1975, and ran for statewide office in 1978. He served for four years in the South Dakota House and another four years in the state Senate before setting his sights on Washington.
He was elected to South Dakota's lone U.S. House seat in 1986, and served five terms before moving to the U.S. Senate in 1996.
Johnson was reelected to the Senate in 2002, narrowly defeating Thune, then a congressman, by just over 500 votes.
“Known for his tenacity and work ethic, Tim was a steadfast leader who dedicated his life to serving the people of South Dakota with integrity and compassion,” Thune said in a statement. “He fought tirelessly for rural America and leaves a legacy that will have a lasting impact for years to come.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem ordered flags be flown at half-staff to honor Johnson.
The Johnsons had two sons and a daughter: Brooks, Brendan, a Sioux Falls lawyer, and Kelsey, who works in public service in Washington.
Johnson and his wife fought cancer. The former senator underwent treatment for prostate cancer in 2004, and Barb Johnson survived breast cancer.
FILE - Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is pictured in Arlington, Va. in this Aug. 26, 2005 file photo. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 14, 2009 file photo, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File)
FILE - Newly elected senator for South Dakota Tim Johnson and wife Barbara wave at cheering supporters at a celebration in Sioux Falls, S.D., Nov. 5, 1996. (Frank Robertson/The Argus Leader via AP, file)
Hurricane Milton dropped to a Category 4 early Wednesday as it churns toward Florida's west coast. The National Hurricane Center had predicted it would likely weaken, but remain a major hurricane when it makes landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday.
The Tampa Bay area, home to more than 3.3 million people, faced the possibility of widespread destruction after avoiding direct hits from major hurricanes for more than a century.
Follow AP’s coverage of tropical weather at https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes.
Here’s the latest:
Trokon Nagbe and his husband Morris Kulp evacuated their one-story home in St. Petersburg to stay at the storm shelter at Gibbs High School, where as of Wednesday morning some 1,700 people were hunkering down.
The couple didn’t have damage from Hurricane Helene, but heard Hurricane Milton will be much worse and didn’t want to chance it. They wished they knew to bring their own cots though — the couple said evacuees are sleeping on the floor of the school’s classrooms.
“Sleeping on the floor, that’s the hardest part for me,” Nagbe said.
“It’s not the Hilton or the Marriott,” his husband Morris Kulp added, “but it sure is appreciated.”
Shortly before noon Wednesday, officials in Pasco County, home to more than 500,000 people in bedroom communities for Tampa and St. Petersburg, said they were getting ready to take buses off the roads.
“This is your last chance if you need to get to a shelter,” the Pasco County Public Information Office said in a written statement. “After that, you’ll need to find a way to the shelter or be prepared to ride out the storm.”
The county has six shelters open for anyone in mandatory evacuation zones.
Foretasted tornadoes and up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) of rain — along with possible hurricane-force wind — prompted officials in the storm’s path in central Florida to urge people to reach their safe places immediately.
“Go now. Don’t wait. The time to be able to move around safely and make those last minute preparations is rapidly closing,” Polk County Emergency Management Director Paul Womble urged residents in a public briefing Wednesday morning.
Inland from the Tampa area and south of Orlando, Polk County is home to the Legoland Florida Resort theme park, which was closed ahead of the storm.
The weather will get bad after dark and flooding may even worsen over the next couple days as rainwater finds its way to the ocean, Womble warned.
“Once you’re hunkered down, just stay put. There’s no reason at that point to go out there. There will be trees down, there will be power lines down, it will be dangerous to move around,” Womble said.
Nearly 3,000 people already were in the county’s 19 shelters and there was still plenty of space for more, he said.
“Those evacuating before Hurricane Milton or recovering from Hurricane Helene should not be subject to illegal price gouging or fraud – at the pump, airport, or hotel counter,” she said in a statement Wednesday.
Harris said the federal government is tracking allegations and “will hold those taking advantage of the situation accountable.”
President Joe Biden made a similar demand Tuesday.
“I’m calling on the airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to accommodate evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, to just do it on the level,” he said at the White House.
The Florida Highway Patrol said in an email Wednesday that the Sunshine Skyway Bridge spanning the mouth of Tampa Bay is now closed to traffic as Hurricane Milton approaches.
Officials had earlier said major bridges around Tampa Bay planned to close in the afternoon.
The Skyway links Pinellas and Manatee counties and carries Interstate 275. It’s often closed when winds from any source reach a certain threshold.
Christian Burke and his mother Patty are hunkering down in their three-story, poured concrete home overlooking the bay.
Burke said his father, a builder by trade, designed this home with a Category 5 hurricane in mind — and now they’re going to test it.
As a police vehicle drove by blaring an announcement urging residents to evacuate, Burke acknowledged staying isn’t a good idea and said he’s “not laughing at this storm one bit” — he just believes the house his father built will withstand it.
More than 12 million people in the state faced threat of tornadoes along with hail and wind, the service said.
The city of Tampa was providing real-time flooding information via its website. However, city officials said it was past time for residents to evacuate or stay home.
“Stay home today. By this time, you should be either evacuated or hunkering down,” the city said in a post X on Wednesday morning.
The city was still working to gather debris from Hurricane Helene in advance of Milton’s arrival.
That’s according to the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center, which says the storm will make landfall along the center of Florida’s west coast.
The hurricane center had previously said landfall could come late Wednesday or early Thursday.
State education officials say some school buildings will be used as shelters for the storm throughout the affected region.
Among those closed is the Hillsborough County school district, where Tampa is located, which has about 224,000 students and is the nation’s seventh largest school district.
Colleges and universities also canceled classes, with some saying they would switch to remote learning later this week if they’re able to resume classes. Some schools outside the storm’s path, including the University of Miami, planned to take precautions by shifting to remote learning through Thursday.
A couple blocks from the Peace River, Ted Gjerde worked up a sweat Wednesday morning as he prepared his home for up to 12-feet of storm surge. His house sits on a 10-foot hill but that might not be enough protection.
The retiree has spent his life dealing with water — 23 years in the Navy running boilers followed by 20 years working at a nearby state water plant — so he had a plan. He had piled sandbags in front of his garage and put plywood and caulk on the interior of his doors.
“Hopefully, that should get me to 13 or 14 feet up,” he said before giving a mock, “Yay.”
He would spend the storm at the treatment plant, 25-feet above sea level, with his wife and their two German shepherds. His 1967 Chevy Camaro was already there.
Two weeks ago, Helene’s surge had unexpectedly gotten to the bottom of his garage door — a couple more feet and his classic car and his house would have been in trouble. Nearby homes that aren’t elevated got swamped.
“We got lucky, real lucky,” Gjerde said.
“ I don’t think there’s any way around that,” he said at a Wednesday morning briefing.
Tropical storm warnings were issued as far north as Savannah, roughly 200 miles from the projected path of the hurricane’s center.
Storm surge of 2 to 4 feet was forecast for Georgia communities including St. Simons Island, home to nearly 16,000 people, and Tybee Island, which has population of 3,100. Wind gusts of up to 45 mph could break off large tree limbs, topple shallow-rooted trees and cause scattered power outages, according to the National Weather Service.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said to people choosing to remain home on barrier islands, “just know that if you get 10 feet of storm surge, you can’t just hunker down with that.”
“If you’re on the southern part of this storm, you are going to get storm surge,” DeSantis said.
“It’s churning massive amounts of water, and that water is going to come out,” he added. “Man, if you’re anywhere in the eye or south, you are going to get major storm surge.”
And it will remain closed Thursday, according to a statement on the airport’s website.
“We plan to resume operations on Friday, Oct. 11, but that will depend on a damage assessment and staffing,” the statement said.
The closing includes the airport terminal, car rental agencies and parking facilities.
“Florida will not stand for looting — we will not stand for it. We will come after you,” said Mark Glass, commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The models were developed before the storm, with plans specific to various parts of the state, said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The plans will be used to project where the most damage will likely be, based on the hurricane’s last position and movement at landfall, he said.
That includes 6,000 Florida National Guard members and 3,000 members of the National Guard from other states.
“This is the largest Florida National Guard search and rescue mobilization in the entire history of the state of Florida,” he said during a Wednesday morning briefing.
There are 31,000 people in shelters and there’s room for nearly 200,000 people, “so there is space available in these shelters,” he said.
The National Weather Service in Miami posted a photo on the social platform X of the funnel crossing the highway Wednesday morning with the words: “TORNADO crossing I-75 as we speak! Seek shelter NOW!”
“The roads and the interstates, they are flowing,” he said, but added that traffic conditions could deteriorate as the day goes on Wednesday.
But in a Wednesday morning briefing, the governor said highway patrol cars with sirens are escorting gasoline tanker trucks to get them through traffic to refill the supply.
“And they are continuing with the fuel escorts as we speak,” he said.
In the Port Charlotte area, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Tampa, officials said water pressure would be lowered Wednesday morning.
Utility operations for Charlotte County also would be suspended at noon. Officials said on the county’s webpage that storm surge and heavy rainfall will inundate the sewer system, making it difficult for wastewater to flow properly.
Milton is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast late Wednesday or early Thursday.
“We must be prepared for a major, major impact to the west coast of Florida,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday.
As of Wednesday morning, the storm was about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southwest of Tampa and moving northeast at 16 mph (26 kph).
But there were no immediate strong winds. Most businesses were closed as people finished storm preparations and got to the location where they’ll ride out the storm.
They’re also providing other key information, such as shelter locations. On Wednesday morning, Pinellas County sent people text messages, emails and direct cellphone calls to warn of the dangers. Similar methods are used in neighboring Hillsborough County and other locations.
“This is it, folks,” Emergency Management Director Cathie Perkins said at a Wednesday morning news conference. “Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out and you need to get out now.”
Perkins said 13 public shelters are open for people with no other option to escape the storm and that major bridges around Tampa Bay would begin closing in the afternoon. Perkins also said people should not feel a sense of relief because of indications Milton might come ashore south of Tampa.
“Everybody in Tampa Bay should assume we are going to be ground zero.,” she said.
Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene ’s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens the Florida coast less than two weeks later.
The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 mph (21 kph), and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above average, WWA said.
“Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals — which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances — were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a study co-author and a climate researcher at Imperial College London, said in an interview.
Milton will likely be similarly juiced, the authors said.
The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.
▶ Read more about the effects of climate change on hurricanes.
In Charlotte Harbor, about two blocks from the water, Josh Parks spent Wednesday morning packing his Kia sedan with his clothes and other belongings from his small triplex apartment.
The clouds were swirling and the winds had begun to gust. Two weeks ago, Helene’s surge brought about 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water to the neighborhood, its streets still filled with waterlogged furniture, torn out drywall and other debris.
“It’s a ghost town around here,” said Parks, an auto technician.
His roommate had already fled and Parks wasn’t sure when he would be back.
“I told her to pack like you aren’t coming back,” said Parks, who was fleeing to his daughter’s inland home.
Law enforcement vehicles blocked the bridge from the mainland to the barrier island of St. Pete Beach on Wednesday morning, where as of Tuesday evening, officials had closed down access to this string of low-lying barrier islands that jut out into the Gulf.
All residents in these low-lying communities west of the city of St. Petersburg are under mandatory evacuation orders, as another storm bears down less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene killed 12 people in the Tampa Bay area, including residents who didn’t leave – and then drowned in their homes.
At a park bench on the side of the road that cuts through the small island of Deadman Key, plastic bags stuffed with clothes and a shopping cart full of someone’s personal belongings sat in the blowing rain, seemingly abandoned by its owner ahead of Hurricane Milton’s expected impact.
Three boats were already dashed against a low-lying seawall and under a bridge, apparently casualties from Helene, which sent deadly storm surge into scores of homes in Pinellas County, even as the eye of that storm stayed 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore from this stretch of the coast.
Officials are warning that a direct hit from Hurricane Milton would bring far greater risks to this part of the state.
The National Weather Service on Wednesday morning issued the watch, which includes a vast part of Florida, including the Tampa area, the Florida Keys and Miami-Dade County.
“We’ve seen a lot of questions about, ‘well I live on a creek,’ or ‘I live on a river, is it really going to get 10 to 15 feet where I live?,’” Sarasota County Emergency Management Chief Sandra Tapfumaneyi said in a briefing early Wednesday.
“That storm surge is going to start at 10 or 15 feet near the coastline and then it’s going to travel,” she said. “And storm surge likes to go on the path of least resistance. So those of you that live near a river, that live near a creek, those river banks, their water will come up.”
“We do not want you staying in your home if you’re anywhere near a body of water,” Tapfumaneyi said.
“This is going to be an intense disaster for Sarasota County,” she added. “Evacuate now if you have not done so already.”
Boards on the window of a store display a message ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Milton, in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla., Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Members of the Florida Army National Guard stage on a beach as they prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Milton, in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla., Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A boarded up business stands beside a deserted street in an evacuation zone, ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Milton, in Anna Maria, Fla., on Anna Maria Island, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
