Republican Ron Johnson is the junior senator from Wisconsin. He won the seat in one of 2010’s biggest upsets, dispatching 18-year Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold.
Johnson grew up in Mankato, Minn. He says he developed a strong work ethic at an early age, delivering newspapers, caddying at a golf course, and baling hay on his uncle’s dairy farm. He was a restaurant dishwasher at 15 and within a year won a promotion to night manager. Although Johnson didn’t finish high school, he still attended college, working full-time and managing to graduate with $7,000 in the bank. After graduation, he married his high school sweetheart. He and Jane Johnson now have three children.
While working as an accountant, Johnson went to night school to earn a master’s in business administration. Just short of a degree in 1979, he decided to move to Oshkosh, Wis., to start a plastics company, PACUR, with his brother-in-law. Their first customer was a company co-founded by his father-in-law. Since then, the business has become a major producer of specialty packaging for medical devices, employing around 120 workers.
Johnson said his political views have been influenced by Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, which argues that civilization cannot exist where men are slaves to society and government. He also has looked to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., author of the GOP “road map” for entitlement reform. Johnson said that his motivation to run against Feingold was the senator’s support of the Democrats’ 2010 health care overhaul, which he called “the single greatest assault to our freedom in my lifetime.”
He entered the race in May, just days before the state Republican nominating convention. Three GOP candidates were already competing, including beer mogul and former state Commerce Secretary Dick Leinenkugel and Madison developer Terrence Wall. But Johnson’s ability to self-finance made an immediate impact. At the convention, Leinenkugel surprised everyone, including Johnson, by taking his turn at the lectern to drop out and endorse Johnson, saying, “It’s not my time…. It’s Ron Johnson’s time.” Wall then reluctantly followed suit. Spending more than $4 million of his own money, Johnson went on to crush Watertown businessman Dave Westlake in the September primary with 85% of the vote.
In the general election contest, Johnson began with backing from tea party activists. “America needs to be pulled back from the brink of socialism and state control,” Johnson told a tea party gathering in May 2010. Bu some conservative groups developed second thoughts about his readiness for the Senate. Early in the campaign, he acknowledged that he was still developing his views on issues. One state group, the Rock River Patriots, declined to endorse him, saying they were unimpressed with his knowledge of the Constitution. But the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sensing an opportunity, jumped in to help, as did conservative kingmaker Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina.
The campaign between Feingold and Johnson was nasty, especially by Wisconsin’s usually civil standards. Without a legislative record of his opponent to mine, Feingold sought to concentrate on Johnson’s record in business, attempting to depict him as someone more concerned about profits than people, “with a country club view of reality.” He was helped along by an Associated Press story just before the election revealing that five of Johnson’s 120 employees relied on state-provided health coverage for low-income families. Feingold also called Johnson a hypocrite for opposing federal economic stimulus funds and then allegedly seeking those funds for renovation of an opera house.
Johnson fought back, noting in one ad that the Senate has 57 lawyers, including Feingold, but just one accountant and no manufacturers like himself. His GOP allies also did a textbook job of depicting the incumbent—who contemplated running for president in 2008—as an entrenched Washington insider supportive of deficit spending. Johnson called for a “hard spending cap” in the federal budget, while Feingold said he would support giving the president line-item veto power over appropriations bills. On the issue of climate change, Johnson took the position common among hard-right conservatives that global warming is “not settled science.”
In spite of 18 years of service in the Senate and his independent stands on issues that appealed to Wisconsin voters, Feingold was surprisingly endangered, with polls revealing Johnson ahead and the incumbent on the defensive for his vote for the Democrats’ health care overhaul. He fought back by making his own appeal to tea party groups, touting his vote against the Bush-era USA PATRIOT Act as an infringement on personal liberties. Labor unions, MoveOn.org, and other liberal groups made the race a priority, and Feingold raised $21 million compared to Johnson’s $15 million, all to no avail. Johnson beat Feingold, 52% to 47%.
Once in Washington, Johnson declined to join the Tea Party Caucus, despite the help he got from tea party groups in his campaign. He said he wanted to unify Republicans, not further divide them. Johnson got seats on the Senate Appropriations and Budget committees, two important assignments in his quest to clamp down on government spending.
Johnson was relatively quiet during his first few months in office. In May 2011, he notably did not support fellow Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s controversial budget plan to dramatically reduce the deficit and transform Medicare. Johnson’s rationale was that Ryan’s proposal did not cut spending enough. Johnson continued to take a hardline on spending, often resorting to alarmist rhetoric. “I didn’t run to be a senator,” he told the Fond du Lac Reporter in June 2011. “The reason I ran is I recognized we’re [the federal government] bankrupting this nation.”
Johnson also proved willing to prevent other Senate actions in order to push his debt reduction agenda. In late June 2011, he blocked a resolution to support military action in Libya, saying on the floor that the debt is “the single most important issue facing this nation.” Hoping for more radical spending cuts, Johnson joined 18 other Senate Republicans in opposing the August 2011 deal that raised the debt ceiling.
Johnson launched a bid for a Senate Republican leadership post as conference vice chairman. The race was a classic outsider vs. insider battle, with the maverick Johnson up against establishment candidate Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. Republicans favored Blunt over Johnson, 25-22. An April 2012 Roll Call story reported that Johnson had alienated other Senate Republicans, while also claiming that Johnson was frustrated with his own legislative staff. Johnson blasted the article and told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “it’s pretty clear there is some discomfort with an independent voice pushing for solutions.” For the year 2011, National Journal ranked Johnson the second most conservative member of the Senate.
