Top Giants owner: Criticism hurts but racist label ‘untrue’
At a time when complex thoughts are expressed and digested 280 characters at a time, nobody should be surprised that a man’s life of nearly 86 years can be distilled into a narrow story in a few hours.
That story’s protagonist — or antagonist, depending on one’s view — is Charles Bartlett Johnson, who built a financial behemoth and a weighty philanthropic record over 45 years while becoming the San Francisco Giants’ largest shareholder.
Until recently, only the most keen Giants fans had a clue who Johnson was. But now, controversy over his recent political activity — a pair of donations to candidates and causes that had some branding him a racist — pushed him into a spotlight he has studiously shunned.
Johnson’s story naturally starts long before the uproar of the past few weeks. A man born the year that Franklin D. Roosevelt moved into the White House has a much more layered history.
It includes growing up in a family of relatively modest means and attending a racially diverse high school in New Jersey, playing football at Yale, then helping turn his father’s small investment house into what is now Franklin Templeton Investments, which manages nearly $700 billion.
Johnson has become the
134th richest person in America, according to Forbes, worth about $5 billion. He is a longtime football lover who has come to own 26 percent of a major-league baseball team. And one simple suggestion he made in a phone call 26 years ago proved key in turning the Giants into what they are today.
As a donor, Johnson has given far more money to charitable causes and his alma mater than he has to political causes, while still becoming one of the Republican Party’s most reliable donors.
That’s where his story picked up in this election cycle.
Johnson gave $1,000 to a PAC that created a racist radio ad in Arkansas, and, with wife Ann, donated $5,400 to the Mississippi campaign of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who set off a firestorm by saying she would be in the “front row” for a public hanging. HydeSmith later said the comment was made in jest.
Johnson has asked for those donations back and publicly has renounced bigotry. Still, his reputation in the left-leaning Bay Area has taken a hit that might sting for longer than a typical news cycle.
In a 45-minute phone interview this past week from his home in Palm Beach, Fla., Johnson told The Chronicle it was hard to hear himself called racist.
“Nobody likes to be criticized, particularly when it’s untrue,” he said.
At the same time, he was resigned, saying, “I’m 85 years old. I’ve been around the block a few times, and I know these things happen. It’s unpleasant reading about these things, but I’ll have to put up with it.”
Oakland civil-rights attorney John Burris sounded the loudest call for a sincerescinded Giants boycott after the donations. Even Burris had a different view of Johnson after a “free-flowing” phone call Thursday that also included the Rev. Amos Brown of the NAACP and Giants President and CEO Larry Baer.
Burris, who had not previously spoken with the man, said he felt Johnson genuinely listened to their concerns and “seemed very credible to me, really a man of integrity. I walked away thinking this is a petty decent fellow. The most important thing was bringing (the issue) to light and having a bit more carefulness in the future.”
Burris learned on the call that Johnson was raised and attended an integrated high school in Montclair, N.J., where one of Burris’ daughters lives.
Back then, Johnson’s investment in baseball was much simpler.
Johnson traces his fandom to age 10, when he was taken to the Yankees’ spring training, although his father, Rupert, was a huge fan of baseball’s New York Giants. That kindled Charles’ interest in the team.
His athletic career was modest. Johnson played football at Montclair High and Yale. Decades later, Johnson and his wife, Ann, gave Yale the biggest single donation it ever received, $250 million. But friends say he did not eat with a silver spoon in college. In fact, Johnson worked as a waiter for part of his time as a student.
His father’s investment company, named after Ben Franklin to honor his frugality, was not a Wall Street giant. When Charles and brother Rupert Jr. assumed control of the firm in 1957, it managed $2.5 million.
Charles Johnson hardly could have bought a sports team at the time. If he could have, it might have been the Giants of the NFL. He did not live and die with baseball. After moving with his family and company to the Bay Area in 1973, when it acquired a local firm, his interest in orange and black heightened.
When first asked in 1992 to invest in the Giants, before he contributed $1 million into a $100 million sale of the team, Johnson told the potential ownership group, “I love the Giants, but I love the 49ers more.”
Johnson’s greater contribution to the franchise initially was not financial, but his suggestion that the wannabe ownership group talk to another Franklin Templeton executive, who was a rabid Giants fan.
Harmon Burns and his wife, Sue, would become the Giants’ largest stakeholders. At their peak they owned an estimated 30-40 percent.
Johnson invested more as shares became available, most significantly buying them from Harmon Burns when he got ill before his 2006 death, then from Sue Burns upon her illness and death in 2009.
“Sue was a Democrat, and she loved Charlie,” said Rob Dean, Sue’s son-in-law, who once worked for Johnson at Franklin and now sits with him on the Giants’ board of directors. He is married to one of the Burns’ daughters, Trina, who is an owner.
Johnson again increased his holdings by partially buying out Peter Magowan and William Neukom when they were replaced as managing general partners. Johnson’s motivation was keeping team’s ownership local.
“We kind of talked and did not want to have somebody come roaring in from the outside and buy a big position and start to change things,” Johnson said.
Even as Johnson’s stake in the Giants grew from single digits to 26 percent, he was not a constant presence at AT&T Park.
He rarely visits the offices at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. Some longtime Giants employees say they have not met him. He attended about 20 games a year before he and Ann moved to Florida full time after his 2013 retirement. He still has season tickets that his children and friends use.
Johnson did not party in the clubhouse in Texas when the Giants won their first World Series in 2010. In fact, he did not even fly in for the game, which he watched on TV. Unlike some sports owners, Johnson does not get chummy with players. He knows Barry Bonds and said he has played golf with Buster Posey.
Johnson and other big investors are consulted on significant player moves, but by all accounts stay out of Baer’s way in running the team.
Johnson’s family is still involved in both businesses. Daughter Jennifer is Franklin Resources’ president and chief operating officer while also sitting for her dad at many Giants board meetings. (He attends only when he happens to be in San Francisco.)
A son, Gregory, is Franklin’s chairman and CEO. Johnson’s brother Rupert Jr. is vice chairman.
The Johnsons had seven children. Their youngest, Mary, died at 23 of a pulmonary embolism. Her name is honored prominently in Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Ann’s alma mater. (She is a physician.)
Packard is a major beneficiary of the Johnsons’ philanthropy.
As The Chronicle reported last week, Johnson donated $4.58 million to national conservative and Republican causes and candidates in the 201718 election cycle.
The Johnsons, individually and through their foundation, also will have donated $180 million over the three years ending Dec. 31 to roughly 200 causes, many focused on health, education and the arts, some especially meant to benefit individuals from “diverse backgrounds,” according to an email from a Johnson representative.
Johnson cited donations to Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, whose mission statement is “opening new doors for students historically underrepresented in higher education,” Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope Academy, the Salvation Army, many police causes and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at City College of New York.
When the Johnsons lived at the Carolands Mansion in Hillsborough, which they bought and restored, they hosted Republican fundraisers and charitable events there, most notably an annual party for homeless children for the Shelter Network of San Mateo County.
“I’m as progressive as a Democrat can get. He’s as conservative a Republican as it gets, but he’s a terrific guy. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t represent him,” said Joe Cotchett, the colorful Burlingame lawyer who said he and Johnson have been friends and associates for 40 years.
Dean, who said he sat on “both sides of the table” doing business with Johnson, called him “fair, honest, extremely smart and inquisitive, and I’d bet that almost all people who actually know him would agree that Charlie is a true gentleman and a very caring person.”
“Obviously, Charlie is a proud American and, yes, he’s a Republican,” Dean said, “but he requested his money back and it disturbs me, just as the Mississippi candidate’s statements disturbed me, that people rushed to judgment about Charlie without knowing anything about him besides the donations.”
“Nobody likes to be criticized, particularly when it’s untrue . ... I’m 85 years old. I’ve been around the block a few times, and I know these things happen. It’s unpleasant reading about these things, but I’ll have to put up with it.” Charles B. Johnson, Giants co-owner, on claims that he is racist