Election season is Marian Johnson's time. And here we are in the thick of it. Marian is its high priestess.
If there's a better political strategist in Florida than Marian, I'd like an introduction. Because I don't believe it. And I'll bet neither do any of the candidates and state officeholders, actually anyone who ever sought the counsel of the Florida Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president of political operations. And that's a lot of people.
How good is she?
Mark Wilson, her boss and the Florida Chamber's president and chief executive officer, says this: “If there was a hall of fame for America’s most successful political strategists, it would be named after Marian Johnson.”
Former presidents, Florida governors, a whole lineage of congressmen know Marian, speak of her fondly and with enormous respect -- because at one time or another in the last nearly 50 years, they've listened to her political advice and been glad they did.
When I told former Gov. Jeb Bush I was doing this story, he lit up. "I'm so glad you're writing a piece on Marian," he said. "She's a great friend and a talented person. Her word is her bond and her data is always reliable."
Marian knows Florida, period. She knows the voter registration statistics and demographics of every county in the state. She gets her kicks from dissecting polls and scanning data that can help establish a strategy for a campaign the chamber wants to win.
If you've ever run for state office, you've met Marian Johnson. Each election cycle she interviews every legislative candidate in every district in Florida, Republican, Democrat and Libertarian. And by the way, she probably remembers the conversation she had with you, word for word.
"I was counting up the other day," she told me. "We've interviewed over 1,000 candidates since I came here in 2003."
Edie Ousley, Florida Chamber vice president of public affairs, quipped, “Marian has adopted so many candidates and elected leaders over the years that she’s become known as the ‘Tallahassee mama.’ Lawmakers past and present will tell you they didn’t know ‘what they didn’t know’ until their Tallahassee mama help set the record straight.”
Marian explains her long love affair with a job that keeps her head buried in numbers for long periods of time, the kind of job that confounds most people in and out of public office. "Everything that affects my life happens in Tallahassee and in Washington," she told me. "A long time ago I told myself I'm going to do everything I can to keep people who shouldn't be in office out, and try to get the good ones in. I believe people can and do make a difference up here."
But Marian Johnson's had some journey to get where she is. As good and as knowledgeable as she is, no way could a story like hers happen today. People don't come out of nowhere to succeed in such a complex, often brutal arena anymore unless they're leaning on a stack of money and a bloodline of influence, and/or a slew of college degrees. Marian had none of the above.
Sitting in her Tallahassee office one summer morning recently, she gave me a glimpse of what it's like to be "little Georgia girl" Marian Johnson. In that mesmerizing Southern drawl of hers, leaning back comfortably in her chair, she walked me through a lifetime of cracks of opportunity she had opened up wide enough to walk through, one after another.
Getting here from there
"My parents weren't political at all," she said. "My mother owned a flower shop and my daddy was an agent with the railroad. I didn't know until I grew up that when Daddy said he was going to a rules meeting, he was talking about the union. Back then, my uncle and I were the only Republicans in the family."
She said she started as a volunteer for the Republican Party of Florida.
In between the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections, she said she went to work for U.S. Sen. Ed Gurney, a Democrat-turned-Republican who became only the second Republican elected to Congress from Florida in the 20th century. "I worked on Ed's campaign, but of course, it was all volunteer back then."
In 1976, when Marian was living in Fort Walton Beach, the Republican National Committee decided to do some tests for blind voter ID phone calls. That was something unusual for a campaign back then. They chose Okaloosa County because of the big military presence there. "They asked me to run it for a day and I ended up running the whole thing until we were done. I just loved it," she said.
Not long after, she caught political strategist Rocky Pennington's eye. Rocky was working for the party at the time, she said. "My husband and I had just moved to Fort Myers when Rocky called me and said Ander Crenshaw was running for secretary of state, he had a bad campaign manager, and would I run Ander's campaign. Well, I said, 'It's July and I don't have my boxes unpacked.' He said 'I won't be able to pay you but I can cover your expenses.' I was shocked. I said, 'People get paid to do that?' Rocky told me he was afraid I would find that out sooner or later."
Republican Crenshaw lost that race, but by less than 200,000 votes against Democrat George Firestone at a time when Democrats plain didn't lose in Florida. "I had a ball doing that" she remembered.
And, of course, because of it, Marian was discovered. During that period her resourcefulness became legend. One example:
"I remember Rocky calling me once, saying 'you need to go to the Greyhound station in Naples and you need to pick up 30,000 tabloids and they need to be labeled by hand and put back on the bus in 4 hours,'" she recalled. "So what I did was find a whole bunch of women and we got it done assembly-line style. They were back on the bus hand-labeled in four hours." To this day, people still can't understand how she did it.
Said Marian, "I'll tell you how. Daddy always told me, 'there's nothing you can't do, get up and find a way.' My mother and daddy instilled in me not to wait for anybody to do it for you because then it probably isn't going to happen."
From the Crenshaw campaign she went directly to Ronald Reagan's primary staff, then back to the party to work as a political director. Reagan called her back in 1984 to work in eight states in the South on a voter contact program.
"If you read the history books," she said, "voter contact is the same thing Abraham Lincoln did and the same thing we all do today -- find those voters, make sure they're registered, get them out to vote. Same thing, only the technique has changed."
In the 1980s Marian's situation changed. Her widowed mother developed breast cancer, which limited Marian's ability to travel. For a period, she worked on Paula Hawkins' campaign, but then she took a turn to what she now refers to as "the dark side."
"You're going to think I lost my mind," she told me, "but in 1985, I went to work for the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers. At first I said, 'No, I don't agree with y'all, I can't do it,' but then I met some of the older trial lawyers like Al Cone who was a delight of a man. Believe me, they were not like the new brand of trial lawyers we have today."
The lawyers hired Marian as director of FLAG, the Florida Lawyers Action Group, their political arm. Her job was to set up a political program and to defeat Dempsey Barron. She did both. "It made me kind of sick when I defeated Dempsey. After that, I knew I had to get out of there."
Barney Bishop, former CEO of Associated Industries of Florida and one of the most familiar faces in Tallahassee today, worked for the Academy at the same time as Marian. He remembers Marian there in a completely different context.
"Over the four years I worked for AFTL, Marian and I became very close friends ... and more importantly she became my political mentor," Bishop says. "She’s the one who changed me from a progressive/centrist Democrat to a conservative Democrat. It took years, but she’s had the most influence of anyone on my political philosophy. And interestingly, she’s never tried to change my opinion, she just let her philosophy and outlook have an impact on me."
Bishop remembers Marian really "showed her stuff" in 1988, during the Academy's effort to defeat Amendment 10, a ballot question proposed by the medical profession and the insurance industry to limit “pain and suffering” damages to $100,000.
"Marian oversaw the entire campaign," he said. "She prepared the campaign plan, and she got it financed by the trial lawyers and then she made sure it was executed properly. I remember she was very involved in the polling aspect of the campaign, from working on drafting the questions, to the order of the questions, to the proper demographic makeup of the people being called, and then the analysis of the numbers after the poll was concluded.
"I remember Election Night 1988. We were at the then-Sheraton Four Ambassadors Hotel off Brickell Avenue in Miami. NBC News was reporting, I think, that the doctors/insurance companies were going to win by an 11 point margin. Instead we won by 13 points."
Said Bishop, "That all by itself made Marian the most respected political operative in Florida, and still today I get asked by so many candidates who want to win, can I introduce them to Marian ... She is still the best political mind in Florida, bar none."
Business bound
After that, Marian flirted with retiring from politics. But that didn't last long. In 1992, when Associated Industries of Florida -- the trial lawyers' polar opposite -- called her to set up a political program, she jumped at it. Business is where her heart had always been. She went to work for AIF and stayed there for 10 years. But before she left she had built the business group's political machine, including an aggressive, high-tech program to identify and support pro-business candidates and provide resources to help those candidates win. On top of that, she developed and implemented a one-of-kind tracking mechanism for statewide offices.
Again, Marian tried to retire but couldn't. In 2003 Frank Ryll, head of the Florida Chamber, called her to do for them what she had just done for AIF. "Back then, the chamber had virtually nothing. They had one PAC," Marian told me. "The way they got contributions was 'Does anybody know anybody related who would know this candidate?' They did no interviews. From 1996 until 2003 they had raised and spent $500,000. Compare that to last election cycle when we spent over $7 million. None of our membership dollars are used for political.
"I said give me the summer to be with my grandkids and I'll come. I did, and instead of just staying long enough to set up a program, as I thought I would, I ended up hoping I will never have to leave. That's how much I love this job," she said.
Marian said wryly, "Now I consider myself Mark Wilson's mother. You know, it's not easy to work for Mark. He has such an insatiable appetite to do the best at everything. He's going to push you to be your best. If you're just coming here to have a job, forget it, it won't work.
"All I can tell you is, if I had been a lot younger and had more energy, I think Mark and I would have torn this state up."
Marian just celebrated her 69th birthday. But retirement isn't something she thinks about as much now as she once did. That's how much she loves what she does.
Marian brought an organized and methodical approach to candidate interviews at the Florida Chamber. She developed an intensive and extensive interview process and questionnaire. In Jacksonville a few weeks ago there were 81 people sitting around a shoe-shaped table ready to interview candidates.
"When candidates walk in the door and see that, they gasp in horror," she said. "But I brief our group and tell them this is not an inquisition. It's so we can be educated by the candidate and help answer questions. People love coming to our interviews."
In two days a couple of months ago, the chamber interviewed 25 candidates, 30 minutes each. Legislators have told me it's an impressively thorough and efficient vetting.
"We interview in Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, then do a makeup session here in Tallahassee for late filers," she said.
This will be a good year for the Legislature, Marian predicts, because there are so many good candidates, Republican and Democrat. "I've seen such a high caliber of people running for office this year. I don't want to tell you my preferences before the primary is over, but you know what -- these candidates are so good, in a lot of cases I won't care if I don't get my first choice. We have good ones stacked up for a change.
There were a handful of candidates Marian felt comfortable mentioning. For example, former nuclear submarine captain Don Handfelt running for Darlene O'Toole's seat. "A person like that, with his principles and commitment, can make a difference here," she said.
"And Michael Grant's coming back. So is Stan McClain -- he's a good man, coming back in Dennis Baxley's seat. And J.R. Williamson -- another great guy -- running for Broxson's seat in HD 3."
Candidates remember Marian, even the ones who wear the other party label. Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation, is one of them:
"I remember meeting Marian for the first time in my early 20s at one of the candidate training sessions the chamber would host in Orlando. I attended with a few friends from the Young Farmers and Ranchers program. We all had notions of one day running for office. I was thoroughly impressed with her command of the lay of the land in each Senate and House district. It wasn't a matter of should you run but whether you could run it that district and win. Fast forward to 2009, and there I was, now a candidate for the House, and she gave me the same guidance. 'Katie, those numbers don't look good for you,' is what she basically told me. She was right, of course. I've found over the years she almost always is."
Marian has a million stories about some of the candidates she's interviewed:
- There's the libertarian who unfailingly runs every cycle and is back again this year: "He's our funny little guy. His platform when he ran four years ago was prostitution is actually legal. It guarantees you a pursuit of happiness and that makes me happy, so it's legal."
- There's the candidate from Palm Beach County "who you could tell had once been a really smart man but alcohol and drugs messed him up. During the interview Jim Tillman asked a question on one of the subjects of the day -- Should a person who eats a burger from Burger King every day be able to sue the fast food restaurant if they get fat? This candidate answers, 'Well, let's see ... that would be like, should I be able to sue the ice cream maker because I like sugar and butter ... hey, do you know if you whip margarine long enough you make plastic?' We collapsed in hysterics. He didn't get our recommendation but, I guess that's not fair because we got the recipe for making plastic."
- There's Jose Vasquez, the candidate who brought his bodyguard to the interview with him. And he did the entire interview in the third person. 'Jose say to you ...' He kept saying 'everybody makes mistakes and I am a person just like you.' So I went back and Googled him to see what kind of mistake it was he made. Apparently he had thrown a TV at his girlfriend. The next year he decided to run again and he sent me his return address and it was jail. Oh, yes, and he said he had been in the government in Puerto Rico. William Large asked him what his job in the government was. He had been a bodyguard. He just had this bodyguard thing."
Marian said she gets "a gut feeling" about candidates, sometimes good, sometimes very bad.
"I go by those gut feelings because they've been right on target," she said. "Take Ben Albritton. I met him when I was teaching how to run for office at Political Leadership Institute in Orlando in 2009. As soon as I shook his hand, I knew this was a good and sincere man. I told him if he ever wanted to run, call me. He was from the wrong part of the district, from Wachula, just a little bit of the heart of the district and Winter Haven. Everybody told him he couldn't win. But I told him to raise $30,000 from his district by the end of the quarter. You know what he did? He raised $110,000. He ran everybody else off."
Democrat Ed Narain is another good one, Marian says. "Ed was at the political leadership class I was teaching in St. Petersburg. He wanted to run for something local. I had a good feeling about him. I said 'no, I want you to run for the Legislature.' I told him, 'if you ever want to run for the Legislature, call me.' He did. We set out a strategy, got him a campaign manager. He's a minority from a minority party, but he's filed a bill for the chamber both years he's been here and won a Distinguished Advocate award."
She admitted, "I don't like candidates who self-finance. All it tells me about them is they're rich. I like to see a commitment to the office. That means doing the hard work to raise money to run a winning campaign. When you raise money, you listen to people, you have to explain the things you stand for."
Even after candidates win, they're not through with Marian. She shows up at caucuses, trying to be a steadying force for lawmakers and for the chamber's agenda.
Ken Pruitt, former president of the Florida Senate, describes Marian as "the Wizard of Oz. She's always back there behind the curtain pulling the levers.
"She would come to our caucuses," he said, "and immediately build us up. She would remind us that until 1996 Republicans hadn't been in charge in Florida for 120 years, that we should always remember to dance with the one that brung us, be respectful, stand guard over fiscal conservatism. Marian always watched our backs. I can't tell you enough what a tremendous influence she had on me.
"And it was never about her. She never talked about herself, she was always so humble. I'm telling you, if there were 10 Marian Johnsons, watch out -- Florida could be everything we only dream about now. I'm talking about just a good, good person here."
Speaker of the House Steve Crisafulli, like Pruitt, thinks Marian Johnson is one of the best people he met in Tallahassee. "I loved her from the first day I met her in 2008," Crisafulli told me. She's someone who views the world as I do. So calming and steady. I can talk to her like a big sister. And I can tell you, I'm going to miss her. I've treasured her advice."
I asked Marian who she's considered among the Legislature's best leaders? Here are the people she named:
Former House Speaker Alan Bense. "He had a unique way of seeing what needed to be done and knew how to win people to his side."
Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater. "He's unique in so many ways. It hurts my heart that he may not be in government after this."
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. "The little redhead is a star."
Former House Speaker Will Weatherford. "Like me, Will is of Creek Indian descent. It's been nice to watch his maturity and poise, and I think he has a very bright future of public service if he wants it."
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli. "He has such character. I just think the world is a better place because of him."
Former House Speaker Larry Cretul. "Humble to a fault, and effective. He calls himself my intern."
Former Senate President Ken Pruitt. "He's a good reason for killing term limits."
Attorney General Pam Bondi. "She's a good attorney general, isn't afraid to do anything."
Former Gov. Jeb Bush. "I just think the world of him. He was the Dade County chairman in '84 when I worked with Reagan-Bush."
"All I can say is, God has been really good to me. I was sitting at the table with Gov. Scott the other day talking politics," Marian told me, "and I don't mean that bragging. It started me thinking, I'm a little South Georgia girl who should have been able to go to college but was denied it. Still, the field God put me in, He equipped me to do it and gave me all the lessons I needed and here I am today, sitting with the governor."
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
