incumbent. he wasn t from politics, he ran a business. i m like a campaign is county fairs and dairy breakfasts and shaking hands seven days a week 24 hours a day. reporter: but she helped him make in roads with conservative operatives and radio talk show hosts. coupled with his accounting background. he won, ousting fine gold in a gop wave election. we need to restore fiscal sanity to this nation. reporter: they ran finegold again in 2016. and johnson notched another victory. this time alongside donald trump. what do you say when people are, like, what happened? well, i get two kinds of questions. one is what happened to ron johnson, and the other is, like, why is he saying and doing all this stuff. reporter: craig gilbert has been covering politics since the 1980s and following johnson