[Peace-discuss] NYT: Hello, Illinois? Your Congressman Is on the Line

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/us/politics/hello-illinois-rep-tim-johnson-is-on-the-line.html

April 24, 2012
Hello, Illinois? Your Congressman Is on the Line
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON  — In an institution hampered by perpetual uncertainty,
there are a few comforting givens on Capitol Hill.

Bean soup is always on the Senate cafeteria menu.  Reporters stand
unceasingly idle behind a string of red velvet ropes, waiting to shove
a recorder in the face of a senator departing the floor.

And Representative Tim Johnson, Republican of Illinois, perpetually
paces the Capitol hallways, a cellphone pressed to his ear as he talks
to constituents, whom he calls all day long, one by one, just to say
hello.

He calls them as he walks to go vote, plowing through the Longworth
House Office Building, then traversing the Capitol Rotunda and zooming
beyond his colleagues, a phone pressed tightly to his right ear as if
it grew there.

He calls them as he wanders through his district’s shopping malls and
the parks near the Capitol, his staff chasing alongside with large
binders, a mobile virtual office.

He calls them from the treadmill at the members’ gym. “I can remember
several occasions in the House gym where we started out on treadmills
or exercise bikes at the same time, and both got in pretty healthy
workouts,” said Representative Ron Paul of Texas. “There was one big
difference: As we worked out next to each other, I read the paper and
watched the news. Tim had a call list he dialed through and talked to
dozens of constituents.”

He calls them so often that most of his colleagues have never seen him
without a cellphone, except when he canters to the House floor to
vote.

Mr. Johnson —   a willowy figure, so kept by the combination of
constant motion and a diet consisting largely of hot tea and granola —
will soon be  a Capitol Hill fixture no more. Elected in 2000, Mr.
Johnson abruptly announced after winning his primary that he would
retire at the end of the year, citing, among other things, a “grossly
gerrymandered Congressional map” in which “two-thirds of the voters
have never been represented by me.”

No one likes to contend with new constituents — Representative Barney
Frank of Massachusetts said redistricting was one of his motivations
to retire — but Mr. Johnson, 65, was not simply nervous about
appealing to new voters. He was worried about a whole new set of first
phone dates.

Mr. Johnson,  a thrice-divorced father of nine, calls roughly 4,000 of
his 700,000 constituents each year, one by one by one.  “I am almost
like a dinosaur,” said Mr. Johnson, who would agree to be interviewed
only by, yes, phone. “I think people think I am unique,” he added,
clearly embracing the notion of understatement. “My style makes you
sufficiently out of the mainstream and people can wonder how effective
you are.”

He cuts a  slightly disheveled swath through the Capitol at all hours,
his calling often cited by colleagues as his chief accomplishment
after a decade of service here.  “Tim had his finger on the pulse of
his district,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in an e-mail, “and always
reminded members that at the heart of every democracy are
representatives who will listen first, learn, and then lead.”

Mr. Johnson said his calling habits grew out of his many years in the
Illinois state legislature. “I came to the conclusion that the problem
with government is that they were too out of touch with people and had
very little individual relationships,” he said.

His political passions were inherited from his parents, he said, “kind
of the way some families are farmers.” His father’s family were
Southern Democrats involved with the Truman campaign, and his mother
came from “strong Republicans from Central Illinois.”

>From that sprung Mr. Johnson, a lifelong Republican who first served
on the City Council in Urbana, Ill. He has one of the most independent
records in the House, with a roughly 50 percent positive rating on his
votes from liberal and conservative groups alike. Republican House
leaders never quite know which way Mr. Johnson will go on any number
of matters — he was against them on a payroll tax holiday and opposed
a troop presence in Afghanistan.

Mr. Johnson has attributes that most people do not see, said
Representative Daniel Lipinski, a moderate Democrat from Mr. Johnson’s
home state.  “I always appreciated how he literally marches to the
beat of his own drummer,” Mr. Lipinski said, recalling his colleague’s
passionate questioning of witnesses as a guest in a 2008 Science and
Technology Committee hearing that always stuck with him, and his very
occasional floor speeches, like one opposing a Republican tort reform
bill.

“He rarely speaks on the floor, but when he would speak, he was
really, really good,” he said. “I think most members never really saw
it.”

Mr. Johnson said he is happy to be known as the caller, mostly because
his constituents so appreciate hearing from him and asking him to
address their problems. “No one person stands out more than another,”
he said. “In most cases they were happy,  in a few cases tearful, I
guess at the thought that a congressman would talk to an individual
from a small town in Central Illinois.  And in a few cases it’s angry
about my votes. Hopefully it has been beneficial to the system.”

For now, he is hanging up. “The truth is, it’s missed baseball games,
missed weddings and a couple specific situations that arose very
recently with my family,” he said, explaining his desire to return to
private life at the end of the year, hoping he left his impression
along the marbled halls. “I want people to remember that I was a voice
of common sense and real people living in the real world.”


-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org