Johnny Isakson: ‘Hope … is what’s kept me in politics’
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., retired this month after 45 years in public service.
He leaves Congress as the only Georgian ever to serve in the state House of Representatives, the Georgia Senate, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
After helping build the state Republican Party as Georgia House minority leader, Isakson went on to serve as chairman of the state Board of Education.
In Washington, he spent six years in the House representing a district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs and 14 years in the Senate, including a stint as chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Recently, he looked back on his career in an exclusive interview with Capitol Beat News Service:
What made you decide to enter politics back in 1972, five years into your real estate career?
I was active in the real estate business but also in my civic association in a small neighborhood in East Cobb. There were beginning to be a lot of issues dealing with zoning … and there was an incumbent county commissioner up for re-election who had been the proponent of all the multi-family units being proposed at the time. … I never intended to run for anything, certainly not county commission, but I did and did pretty well for not being experienced and not having any money. … I did well enough to whet my appetite and said, ‘If I get a chance, I’ll try this one more time.’ I did two years later for the legislature and won that seat. That year, I was the only Republican to defeat a Democrat in the state of Georgia who was an incumbent. … That’s how I started my career.
You essentially built Georgia’s Republican Party in the ’70s and ’80s along with some allies.
A lot of people deserve credit for that. I was on the building team, but I was not the builder. … (The late U.S. Sen.) Paul Coverdell and I did a lot of work to get people to come to Saturday morning breakfasts and get enthusiastic about being outnumbered 10 to 1.
How difficult was it in a state Democrats had dominated since Reconstruction?
It was easy back then to get attention because the press would settle for anything from us because there weren’t many of us. … As we grew our numbers and got influential enough to start driving issues, for awhile, it worked to our advantage … because they let us state our case without having anybody give the alternative. That went away as we won more seats.