Paul Johnson has been active in politics and policy for over forty years. Early in Johnson’s career, he was chosen to be a delegate with the US State Department, first serving in Saudi Arabia where he studied its oil cartel business to understand a major Middle Eastern political issue better. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the State Department selected him to assist Poland in implementing new local governing systems as the new government in Poland was moving closer to democracy. Over many years, Paul studied and visited almost every major site of genocide, including Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. He also went to China studying the changes from the Great Leap Forward under Mao to the incredible economic progress after it liberalized it markets. He also visited Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result of his travels on behalf of the government, Paul received sobering insights into the dramatic differences between authoritarian governments and Western liberal democracies. In 1990, Paul was elected mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, where he served until 1994. In 2016, he was selected among the “Top 16 People Most Likely to Watch in Arizona.” In 2021, he was inducted into the Marquis Who’s Who and received its Humanitarian Award. He has also managed the regional efforts of several presidential campaigns. Larry Aldrich has a degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech and a law degree from Tulane Law School. He has been a federal antitrust prosecutor and a company lawyer for Gannett Co., Inc., as well as president and CEO of the two daily newspapers published in Tucson, Arizona (The Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen.) Following his newspaper career, he launched Tucson Ventures, the first venture capital firm headquartered in Southern Arizona. He also co-founded and chaired the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, a key non-profit representing large and small private businesses. He served as senior vice president and then chief executive officer of University Physicians Healthcare, which provided all clinical services for the over four hundred medical doctors at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He remains an active member of the District of Columbia Bar Association and a staunch defender of First Amendment rights.
