Tim Johnson
Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Brenden Moore…
Former U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Urbana, who represented swaths of east-central Illinois for more than a decade, died Monday evening. He was 75. […]
Johnson served in Congress from 2001 to 2013, representing a mostly-rural east-central Illinois district centered around Champaign-Urbana that also took in portions of Bloomington-Normal and the outskirts of Decatur.
A Champaign native and graduate of the University of Illinois, Johnson did not wait long to enter politics, first winning election to the Urbana City Council in 1971. He later served as a member of the Illinois House from 1977 until his election to Congress in 2001.
During his time in Washington, Johnson became known for his quirky quest to call all 300,000 households in his district, an effort that led him to call as many as 100 constituents per day.
He was constantly on the phone calling constituents when he was in the Illinois House.
* WAND…
In 1971, Johnson became a member of the Urbana City Council.
He never lost an election and, in his latest run, he was voted onto the board of Parkland College in Champaign in 2015.
He never stopped working.
* Tom Kacich…
“He was the best retail campaigner that I’ve ever seen or ever heard of,” said Jerry Clarke, who was Mr. Johnson’s chief of staff for 10 of his 12 years in Congress. “Over the years, Tim would talk to these other members of Congress about his constituent calls. And I cannot tell you how many other congressmen came to me and sat in my office and said, ‘Explain this whole system to me.’ I would tell them right upfront that ‘You will never do this. I don’t know anyone else who would do this.’” […]
“I remember we did a poll before one of our races and we asked a question like, ‘Have you ever personally talked to Congressman Johnson?’ And 72 percent of the people we polled said yes,” Clarke recounted. “Everybody that called his office stated with, ‘Hey, I’m a friend of Tim’s …’ That meant nothing to the staff because everyone who called in said they were his friend.”
“People didn’t call him Congressman Johnson. They called him Tim,” recalled Joan Dykstra, who worked in his congressional office and later was the mayor of Savoy. “If you ask anyone who worked for him, they’d tell you he created a lot of work for the staff because he would go into McDonald’s or a bar and ask people how he could help them. Then he would write those famous notes to the staff and we had to follow up with solutions.” […]
Mark Shelden, a former elected official in Champaign and Champaign County, was Mr. Johnson’s last chief of staff.
“As a Republican, he was idiosyncratic,” said Shelden. “He was a trial lawyer and he probably voted for more environmental issues than some moderates or liberals. He didn’t have any signature pieces of legislation that you could point to. He just had votes that were representative of the people he served.”
He was often underestimated. I remember the first time I ever saw him. I was outside the House floor and this skinny man walked by with messed up hair and wrinkled clothes and I asked somebody who the heck that guy was and was floored when I heard the answer (and I’ve never been a snob when it comes to appearances). He was a bit of an odd duck, but hugely successful in politics.
* Speaking of underestimated, this is from the New York Times more than 20 years ago…
Back in 1980, when he was one of the newer members of the Illinois House, State Representative Timothy V. Johnson, a Republican from the Champaign-Urbana area, rigged a paper clip so that it held the ‘’Yes'’ voting button on his desk in the down position. When a picture of the clip hit the newspapers, he first denied installing it but later backtracked, saying such rigs were ‘’accepted practice'’ in the legislature and enabled members to vote on legislation even when absent from the House chamber, especially at times when votes were called while members were meeting with constituents or working on other pressing matters.
That explanation apparently satisfied voters in Mr. Johnson’s district. He still represents it 20 years later.
But now he has his eye on a larger district, the 15th Congressional, which has an open seat this year, and the photo of the paper clip has come back to haunt him.
His Democratic rival, Mike Kelleher, has dredged up the shot and contends it says much about Mr. Johnson’s worthiness to serve. He has posted newspaper articles about it on the Web — timspaperclip.com — and is running ads about it.
He went on to beat Kelleher by almost 7 points.
- Nearly Normal - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 2:36 pm:
Tim was my Congressman until redistricting after the 2000 census. I walked in a parade in front of the convertible he was in waving to his constituents. I always kidded him and said you owe me big time! He said I owe a lot of voters big time!
He was a Republican who worked for his constituents and was endorsed by the IEA for his pro-education stance.
RIP Tim Johnson.
- Downstate - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 2:52 pm:
I saw him walking through the Bloomington airport. With his rumpled suit and disheveled appearance, the term “bedraggled” came to mind. Always respected his constituent service. In appearance and action he was truly a “public servant”.
- Pot calling kettle - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:00 pm:
I never met him, but I campaigned as a Dem in part of his district in the early 2000’s. I remember knocking on a door in a very small town in central Illinois and chatting with the voter (a solid D on my walk list) who commented that I was only the second office-seeker to ever knock on their door. The other was Tim Johnson. That voter never forgot that contact and stated that was the one Republican they would always vote for. Johnson made a strong impression with his constituents, and that chat with a voter reinforced, for me, the value of retail, 1-on-1 voter contact.
- Lost in Place - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:03 pm:
– He went on to beat Kelleher by almost 7 points. –
Some of the names on this list in the link bring back memories.
- Benjamin - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:03 pm:
I never met the man, but some friends heard him interviewed on public radio and said to each other, “Oh, man, that sounds like [my name], if he were a congressman.” The next time they saw me, they told me this, including Johnson recounting an interaction where he asked a constituent if he had any problems and the guy said he’d been having foot pain.
I laughed and said he should probably see a podiatrist.
My friends laughed, too–Johnson had said the exact same thing, in the same tone of voice (and I believe had his staff look for some in the area). Great minds, etc.
- ;) - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:14 pm:
Now that is how a politician should be. God speed, sir. RIP.
- filmmaker prof - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:23 pm:
Tim had a whole cadre of local people in positions of power - particularly judges & law enforcement as well as media - who regularly covered up his various transgressions to ensure his political success would continue. No “regular guy” would ever get the favors he did; he wasn’t a regular guy.
- Hon. Don Gerard - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:24 pm:
I am the first to acknowledge I was not terribly fond of Tim Johnson until I was called to public service.
During my first visit representing City of Champaign in Washington D.C. he invited me to meet privately and stressed the many opportunities before me to best serve Champaign with respect to working with the federal government (specifically, grants and initiatives willingly overlooked for decades by my predecessors). He urged me to defy the history of “missed opportunities” and legislate in a manner to serve my constituents for the greater good.
Despite our distinct political & ideological differences he reached out to me and invited me to as a guest lecturer in his University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political science honors class. Without exception he cited in detail the various legislation he had helped start and I helped complete. He told his students I was among the most effective and passionate elected officials in downstate Illinois and suggested they pay close attention and consider getting involved.
He periodically contacted me urging I run for various boards or positions and thanked me ofter for four years of progress.
If there is an afterlife I suspect he and Marvin Gerstein are already catching up.
Godspeed, Tim.
- Moi - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:27 pm:
I met him in the ’90s when I was a staffer. We were on different sides of the aisle, but his hard constituent work was to be respected. RIP Rep. Johnson.
- illini - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 3:55 pm:
I got to know Tim when he was in Law School and I was a Grad Student and have followed his career of public service over these many years. Tim was a conservative in the good sense of the word and an individual who was principled in his convictions but was definitely not like the dogmatic ideologues who have taken over the Republican Party. He and his type of Republican legislators were already on the endangered species list when he decided to retire.
- ZC - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 4:56 pm:
Fun factoid: Mike Kelleher went on to become Obama’s Director of Correspondence, meaning it was his job to review Obama’s daily constituent letters and pick the ten that Obama would personally read and respond to each day. It’s no US House but I always thought was an interesting role in its own right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/20letters.html
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 5:03 pm:
Tim Johnson had multiple reputations, some good, some bad, and as far as I could tell, they were all true.
Which I guess is to say at the end of the day he was just as human as the rest of us and perhaps a bit more so. People do not need to be perfect to be loved, thankfully. Too the many who adored, cherished, and befriended him throughout the years, I am sorry for your loss.
YDD
- NorthsideNoMore - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 6:23 pm:
Sad to hear this. Tim was cool guy. He represented me in a lawsuit many years ago…he told me what the likely outcome would be, how long it would take, he was right on both accounts 14 months prior. GodSpeed sir.
- Oswego Willy - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 6:43 pm:
My sincere condolences to the Johnson family and his many friends.
Johnson left his mark, was unique in doing so, and did it his way, exactly as he was. That’s a legacy we all can hope.
My sincere condolences.
- Jak Tichenor - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 8:32 pm:
So very sorry to hear of Tim Johnson’s passing. I talked to him many times when he was a state representative back in the 90s. He had a laser-like focus on the issues of the day during committee hearings and was always very happy to talk along the rail on the third floor. He rented a duplex next door to a friend of mine’s back in the day and one night there was a knock at the door and it was Tim, asking to borrow a cookie sheet for baking treats for his kids who were going to visit that night. He was a great public servant. RIP Tim Johnson.
- UnionCraneOp - Wednesday, May 11, 22 @ 9:16 pm:
My brother was Tim’s personal driver during summer breaks when my brother was in college. 110 mph between every ice cream social and Tim was on the phone with constituents the whole time between stops. They don’t make them like Tim anymore.