President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement may be the most powerful game-changing force in American politics today. The presumptive Republican standard bearer’s blessing helps potential primary winners outrun their rivals, and it does so quickly.

Drew Johnson, a candidate for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s Third Congressional District, is a perfect match for Trump’s thumbs up, both for what Johnson would bring to Capitol Hill and for the flamboyant inadequacy of his GOP opponents.

I have had the enormous pleasure of knowing Johnson as a personal friend and fellow freedom fighter in the conservative movement since 2002. He has used his abundant speaking, writing, and analytical skills to promote individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited government.

Johnson, a Tennessee native, scored an early coup when former Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. won an Academy Award for the greatest PowerPoint presentation ever — his chart-laden anti- “global warming” extravaganza, An Inconvenient Truth. Johnson’s think tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, consulted power bills, which are public domain in the Volunteer State. Johnson and his team discovered that Gore’s Nashville mansion devoured 20 times the electricity of a typical American home. The morning after Hollywood’s biggest night, Johnson made this inconvenient truth world famous. The warm glow of Gore’s 2007 Best Documentary victory soon cooled as his Oscar devolved into a prize for Best Achievement in Hypocrisy.

Johnson has collaborated with the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and the Heritage Foundation, and published investigative pieces via Newsmax, the Washington Times, and the Daily Caller. Through these institutions, Johnson has identified some $60 billion in taxpayer-funded boondoggles that lawmakers subsequently junked. He has helped cut taxes, launch education-choice programs, and expand charter schools.

In 2022, Johnson ran for the Clark County Commission, which oversees greater Las Vegas and southern Nevada, where he and his wife, Sarah, have lived since 2015. Johnson won on election night, November 8. He maintained a 1,532-vote lead through the following Friday, November 11.

And then, as befalls too many Republicans, Democrat ballots magically trickled in. Johnson’s margin of victory evaporated. He was overtaken by incumbent Justin Jones, a protégé of former U.S. Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid. Jones beat Johnson by just 336 ballots out of 107,182 cast.

Johnson was one of Nevada’s top-performing Republicans in 2022. In Johnson’s district, he outpaced GOP gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo by 2.1% and US Senate candidate Adam Laxalt by 4.1%

Now, with the support of Nevada Lieutenant Governor Stavros Anthony, State Controller Andy Matthews, women’s sports preservationist Riley Gaines, and........

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