By Bill Salisbury

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Just about everybody knows a Jeff Johnson, but one of them has a name recognition problem.

Just over six weeks before the election, a large share of Minnesota voters don’t know who Republican candidate for governor Jeff Johnson is, and many who recognize his name haven’t formed an opinion of him yet.

Meanwhile, the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a DFL-allied political action committee have spent the past several weeks pummeling Johnson in television ads as a right-wing extremist.

“Tea Party Republican Jeff Johnson, that’s my name,” the candidate joked about the label DFLers are trying to pin on him.

But he isn’t worried. Johnson insists he still has time to introduce himself to Minnesota’s 3.1 million registered voters and overtake DFL Gov. Mark Dayton.

All he needs, he said, is enough money to start airing his own television ads.

“I’ve got to get on TV,” he said. “I need about $1.5 million for the last six weeks. We will get there.”

Johnson, a Hennepin County commissioner and former state legislator, also is trailing in the polls. In four statewide surveys taken since the Aug. 12 primary, Dayton led Johnson by an average of 9 points — 48 percent to 39 percent, according to RealClearPolitics.com. A recent poll in the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune newspaper showed about one third of registered voters didn’t recognize Johnson’s name and 40 percent had not formed an opinion about him.

The polls do not alarm the GOP candidate. Four years ago, he said, Republican Tom Emmer trailed Dayton by 18 points in early September and lost the election by less than half a percentage point. And in 2006, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty entered the fall with a 14-point lead over DFL challenger Mike Hatch and won by less than 1 percent.

“This thing is just by nature going to get much closer,” Johnson told about 40 local government officials, business owners and Republican activists during a recent candidate forum at Red Wing’s historic St. James Hotel.

Moreover, fewer than half the voters surveyed supported Dayton. Johnson said that signals vulnerability for a well-known incumbent.

Carleton College political science professor Steven Schier agreed that the polls show “a majority of voters are not sold on Mark Dayton.”

“They could be persuaded otherwise,” Schier said.

But in a sign his operation may be struggling, Johnson replaced his campaign manager Friday. He brought in David Gaither, a former state senator and chief of staff to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, to take over from Scott Crockett, who led Johnson’s successful bids to win his party’s endorsement in May and the Republican primary in August.