Rep. Tim Johnson (R)

The congressman from the 15th District is Tim Johnson, a Republican first elected in 2000. Johnson was born in Champaign, grew up in Urbana, and graduated from the University of Illinois and its law school. He was elected to the Urbana City Council while still in law school and served four years before winning election to the state House in 1976. In the Legislature, Johnson worked his way up to deputy majority leader. He is a trial lawyer and managed a small farm operation until he sold it in 2005. Johnson ran for Congress after Republican Rep. Tom Ewing announced his retirement in 1999. Ewing and then GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois had been close friends in Congress and previously in the state House, and Ewing backed his election as speaker. But Hastert was unhappy that Ewing delayed his retirement announcement until his 29-year-old son, Sam, could move back to the district from Texas to launch his candidacy to succeed his father. The speaker endorsed state Rep. Bill Brady, the scion of a prominent real estate family from Bloomington. Johnson had more political experience than either of the other Republican candidates and was a ferocious campaigner. The primary results broke along regional lines. Brady won his base of McLean County with 62% of the vote, while in Champaign, Johnson led Brady with 61%. Johnson carried seven of the 11 counties, winning 44% of the vote, to 36% for Brady and 17% for Ewing. Against Illinois State University instructor Mike Kelleher in the general election, the voting pattern was similar. Kelleher narrowly won his home of McLean County, while Johnson secured Champaign and 9 of the 11 counties, winning 53%-47% overall.

In the House, Johnson has compiled a moderate voting record, with maverick tendencies. He exercised notable independence from Hastert while Republicans were still in the majority, which helps to explain his modest committee assignments. But he found other routes to influence. He took issue with the Bush administration’s environmental record and voted against opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, winning him a re-election endorsement from the League of Conservation Voters. He also won over environmentalists for pressuring the Bureau of Land Management in 2005 to abandon plans for off-road vehicle use in Utah’s Red Rock wilderness, an area Johnson termed “mankind’s heritage.” The same year, he was one of 14 House Republicans who voted against $50 billion in proposed domestic spending cuts.

Johnson also bucked the Republican administration on the war in Iraq. In February 2007, he was one of 17 House Republicans who voted for a resolution opposing President Bush’s plan to try to bring an end to insurgent violence with “surge” of troop strength. However, Johnson later opposed Democratic proposals calling for a timetable to withdraw troops. In June 2008, he cited the impact on civil liberties when he was the only Republican to vote against renewal of the law to permit a secret court to approve intelligence surveillance, which the House passed 293-129. His maverick ways probably did not help his efforts to try to keep federal funding flowing to the giant FutureGen project, an experimental, clean-technology coal-fired power plant in Coles County in Johnson’s district. In January 2008, the administration decided to curtail funding for the project. Johnson is hopeful that President Obama, with his ties to the state, will be more supportive; a few other Illinois heavyweights, such as Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, are also behind FutureGen.

In May 2006, after the National Collegiate Athletic Associations reprimanded the University of Illinois for using a “demeaning” American Indian mascot it called Chief Illiniwek, Johnson filed a bill to limit the NCAA’s ability to sanction colleges because of their athletic team’s name, symbol, or mascot. At a field hearing in Champaign, Johnson told an NCAA official, “You do a good job of running basketball tournaments … but you don’t do a good job of social engineering.” Yet the mascot made his last appearance in February 2007.

Johnson reneged on his term-limits pledge in October 2002. In subsequent bids for re-election, in 2004 and 2006, emergency-room physician David Gill challenged Johnson as the Democratic nominee, promoting universal health care as his prime issue. But Johnson prevailed by solid margins. In 2008, he breezed to a 64%-36% re-election.