Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican who succeeded Newt Gingrich in the House of Representatives and who was a moderate Conservative in the Senate for 15 years, who often advocated bipartisan collaboration until he resigned on health grounds in 2019, died Sunday at his Atlanta home . He was 76.
His death was confirmed by the Isakson Initiative, which he founded to raise funds for research into neurocognitive diseases. A cause was not named, but when he resigned, Senator Isakson had cited progressive Parkinson’s disease and surgery to remove a kidney growth.
Mr. Isakson made a fortune as a real estate manager before entering politics at 32. He served on the Georgia legislature for 17 years, losing one race for governor and another to succeed Senator Sam Nunn, a resigned Democrat who served 25 years. As a consolation, the governor appointed Mr. Isakson to chair the state education committee. It seemed like his political career was over.
But Mr Gingrich, the cranky Georgia House of Representatives spokesman, faced a revolt in his faction over the defeats in the mid-term elections. He resigned as a speaker and announced that he would not take office for an eleventh term from January 1999 on at Gingrich’s seat.
In the House of Representatives, Mr. Isakson joined the Education Committee and became a strong supporter of President George W. Bush’s Leave No Child Law, which required states to test and shut down all elementary and high school students Gaps in reading and math. He was photographed with the President in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One and soon became a national figure.
Reaffirming his growing popularity, Mr. Isakson won re-election for his first full term in 2000 with 75 percent of the vote and his second term in 2002 with 80 percent.
Another opportunity arose in 2003. Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, was not standing for re-election. Mr. Isakson jumped into the race, easily defeating Democratic candidate Denise Majette for a Senate seat.
“The crucial election of Johnny Isakson to the US Senate completes the Republican victory in Georgia and gives the state two Republican senators for the first time in modern history,” Georgia Trend Magazine said. “Well respected by Democrats and Republicans, from the same stuff as longtime Senator Sam Nunn, he has a reputation for being a hard-working bridge builder who prefers to spend his time finding accords rather than persisting on differences.”
Of course, Mr. Isakson and his Conservative Republican allies voted in the vast majority of the Senate name calls. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage and defended gun law. He identified with anti-abortionists and stepped dramatically in a wheelchair in the Senate in 2017 to cast a decisive vote against the funding of Planned Parenthood. He voted for most of President Donald J. Trump’s cabinet decisions.
But its exceptions to the conservative line, far fewer numerous, were often striking. When he refuted his party in 2010, he and a dozen other Republican senators helped ratify a strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration with Russia. It halved the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers on both sides.
Usually a reluctant Republican, Mr Isakson has often been at odds with Mr Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign, particularly over his refusal to distance himself from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
When the Nation Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on his national day in 2018, members of the King family gathered at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and denounced Mr. Trump, who had often used what was widely viewed as racist slurs and which were few Days earlier, reports had used shocking terms to describe Haiti and African countries.
Mr. Isakson called it in a statement a day to “demonstrate the guidance and wisdom of Dr. To honor and remember Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy continues to positively impact the lives of many in our state and the surrounding area ”. World. “Commenting on Mr Trump’s comments on Haiti and African nations, he said,” This is not the kind of statement the free world leader should be making and should be ashamed of himself. “
In March 2019, seven months after Senator John McCain’s death, Trump was still launching posthumous attacks on the Arizona loner, who was a naval pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years. Ahead of a military audience in Lima, Ohio, Trump, who had never served in the military, accused him of “a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed too far”.
“It’s unfortunate what he said,” Isakson told Georgia Public Broadcasting. “It will be unfortunate if he says it again in seven months and I will keep my voice up.”
A few months later, Mr Isakson announced that he would be resigning from his Senate seat in late 2019, halfway through his third term, for health reasons.
He was a dominant voice in advocating a multi-billion dollar overhaul of the veterans’ health system and in efforts to end partisan struggles for the allocation of aid to multiple natural disasters in 2018. And he remained popular with voters – re-elected in 2010 without opposition, in 2016 with 55 percent of the vote – and with his Senate colleagues.
“Not only is Johnny a hardworking and successful lawmaker, he’s one of the kindest and most circumspect senators,” said New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader after Isakson announced his resignation. “Regardless of party or politics, everyone will miss Johnny.”
John Hardy Isakson was born on December 28, 1944 in Atlanta to Edwin and Julia (Baker) Isakson. His father founded Northside Realty in Atlanta, which grew to become one of the most successful real estate companies in the country.
After high school, Johnny earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Georgia in 1966. He then opened the first branch of his father’s real estate company in Cobb County. In 1979 he became president of the company, a position he held for 22 years.
In 1968 he married Dianne Davison. They had three children: John, Julie, and Kevin. They all survive, as do nine grandchildren.
From 1976 to 1990 he served 14 years in the Georgia House of Representatives and from 1993 to 1996 three years in the state Senate. His family attended a Methodist church and he taught Sunday School for 30 years.
A social highlight of his senate years was an annual barbecue lunch that he hosted for colleagues on both sides of the aisle. As his 20-year tenure in Washington ended in December 2019, a flurry of honors from voters and Senate colleagues prompted a council from Mr Isakson.
“I’m big on bipartisanism,” he said. “Whether you’re black or white, Republican or Democrat, whatever it is, find a way to find common ground. Give him a chance to work.
“Bipartisanism,” he added, was “a state of being”.
