Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson and his wife, Kathy, spoke with a small group of Piedmont residents and business leaders Wednesday night at the Clyde H. Pike Civic Center. Cindy Crosby organized the event. Cindy owns and operates the Mountain View Dairy goat farm in Piedmont.

Johnson had a goat farm as well.

“Back in the early nineties... I had about 40 or 45 goats,” he said.

Johnson said he raised calves and had a contracting company back then. “I still love goats, all these years,” said Johnson. “But I’m not ready to go back to that.”

Then Johnson turned to some of the issues facing Alabamians

“In an era when we’ve got eleven percent unemployment and Jefferson County is just about to go bankrupt, I cannot believe that bingo is the biggest issue out there,” said Johnson. He believes people should be able to vote on whether to allow the games to be played in Alabama. The Piedmont City Council may soon vote on an ordinance that could allow the electronic bingo machines to operate in the city.

“If people have a computer they can gamble online now,” said Johnson. “You can buy a Croatian lottery ticket.”

All across the state, gambling operations have come under fire from Gov. Bob Riley’s anti-gambling task force. Just this week a federal judge denied a motion to block a raid on Country Crossing Bingo Resort in Houston County. Victoryland owner Milton McGregor has suspended his gaming operations to conduct “computer upgrades.” John Tyson, commander of the Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling, released a statement saying that these “computer upgrades” are in direct violation of a court order that states McGregor has to “preserve and not destroy any evidence.”

There was some talk of road construction. Alabama Highway 21 has seen, according to one attendant, ribbon cuttings by four Alabama governors. It has yet to be widened.

Someone asked Johnson about the future of Piedmont and small towns like it.

“The roads we’re talking about today … the superhighways … are not pavement. It’s high-speed internet,” Johnson said.

He said that broadband infrastructure, the kind that makes high-speed Internet possible, is what towns like Piedmont need to become competitive today.

Kathy Johnson recently resigned her position as the director of Gov. Riley’s Alabama Broadband Initiative and Connecting Alabama, a statewide initiative to increase access to high-speed Internet.

Bill Johnson resigned as director of ADECA in June of 2009. He had been appointed to the position by Riley.

Education is something Johnson has strong opinions on.

“We have to, as a society, just acknowledge that not all our kids are going to college,” said Johnson. He said the state needs to identify those students that aren’t going to college and get them on a career tech or military track.

“This is what I’m going to be really proposing as governor,” said Johnson. He went on to say that in some other countries children are given tests in the eighth grade that determine which will go on to college and which will go on to trade schools.