Meet Matt
Johnston
Hi. I’m Matt.
I’m Caitlin’s husband and Luke’s dad. I’m a soccer coach, avid hiker, community volunteer, environmental advocate, and a bit of a policy wonk. I live on the Mayo peninsula in southern Anne Arundel County but I was born and raised in a small town in rural Missouri on the edge of the Ozark Mountains. It was there that I fell in love with the streams, fields, and people that make rural America so special. And it was there that my parents taught me the value of hard, honest work.
My parents - both teachers - would take time on our long summer road trips across our nation’s heartland to point out the hardworking farmers in fields who grew our food, the factories full of workers building our cars, and the shopkeepers on Main Streets who provided the goods and services that kept rural America humming along. And it was my parents who would stop the car at every park they found along the way so that we could enjoy the clean air and clean water found in so many rural places across this country.
I knew from a young age that I wanted a career where I could fight for those hardworking people and pass along a better environment to their children and grandchildren. So, I headed to the University of Missouri to study history and political science before making my way to Indiana University for graduate school where I studied environmental policy and natural resources management.
Following graduation in 2010, Caitlin and I moved from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic as I took a job at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) to work on Chesapeake Bay policy. I spent the next eight years traveling to every corner of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, working alongside community leaders, farmers, business owners, and local and state government leaders to design solutions to the ever-growing Chesapeake Bay pollution problem. During those years, many of my evenings at home here in South County were spent organizing with our neighbors to preserve our own natural areas like Turtle Run, Jack Creek Park, Beverly Triton Nature Park, and the Forest at Glebe Heights.
It was those South County land use battles that convinced me to start working on policy at the local level. So, in 2019, I became Anne Arundel County’s first Environmental Policy Director. During my tenure with the County, we passed the strongest forest protection bill in Maryland’s history and established strict environmental controls to halt sprawling development that was threatening our forests, straining our infrastructure, and polluting the Chesapeake Bay. We created a land conservation plan to protect our last remaining open spaces. We provided communities with funding to control flooding and combat stormwater runoff. And we gave communities a voice in how their tax dollars should be spent.
In 2022, I stepped away from government to become the Director of South County’s local, nonprofit, riverkeeper organization. This role has allowed me to focus on protecting the watersheds of the South, West and Rhode rivers, right here in our own backyards.
Over my career, I’ve watched our government be a force for good when our elected leaders responded to us, the people, instead of to the big money lobbyists and developers. Right now, corporations and wealthy special interest groups are determining our future. I’m running to change that. It’s time to get big money out of our politics and make our government work for us again.
When we make government work for us, our farmers will have the support they need to defend their land against developers and changing economic and environmental factors. When we make government work for us, we can lower the regulatory barriers that inhibit our small business owners. When we make government work for us, our teachers will have the resources they need to provide world-class education to our children. When we make government work for us, we can make life more affordable for all who live, work, shop, and play in South County.
I’m running to be your next delegate in District 30B so that we can make our government work for us again. I’m running to push back against the developers and monied interests and to pass policies that improve your life, not corporations’ bottom lines. I’m running to keep South County rural and to protect our remaining forests and farms from development. I’m running to give our communities an accessible leader who shows up and a powerful, effective voice in Annapolis. Together, we can do the work that’s required to pass along a better South County to the next generation.
I’m ready for that hard, honest work.
I hope you’ll join me.
