By John Maes
George Johnson (seated), who is semi-retired, often visits the agency bearing his name, Johnson Insurance Agency. Here he confers with his son Craig Johnson, who is now president of the agency as well as mayor of Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
--Craig Johnson, President, Johnson Insurance Agency, Mayor, Elk Grove Village, Illinois
Craig Johnson remembers learning the insurance business at a young age in the 1960s and '70s while growing up in the then fledgling Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. The source of that learning was his agent father, George Johnson, who ran a property/casualty agency from the family home.
"With having an agency in the house I could take a car change when I was 10 years old," he remembers. "If my dad wasn't home, I might answer the phone and the guy on the other end of the line might say he bought a new car. Since I already knew what companies write the business, I would take the information, give it to my dad when he got home and he would make the policy change."
But at the same time, there was another learning process going on in the Johnson home: that of local government and civic involvement. The elder Johnson was heavily involved in community affairs. He was active in the local Cub Scouts and Jaycees and served as the village's first insurance commissioner, regularly attending all meetings of the village board.
He even had to turn down requests to run for the village board and park board because of the time constraints. After all, there was a family business to run and that had to come first.
That exposure to civic involvement, coupled with the early on-the-job training helped to mold the younger Johnson's career into roughly equal parts of both realms: insurance and government. Craig Johnson runs the Johnson Insurance Agency, only a block away from the house he grew up in. Last April, he began his second term as mayor of Elk Grove Village, one of the more bustling suburbs in the Chicago area with a population that now tops 36,000 and whose board of trustees recently passed a $60 million budget for fiscal 2001-2002.
Johnson runs the $2.6 million insurance agency with his brother-in-law, Bill Beaupre, and a largely part-time staff, save for one full-time producer. His father, now 72, is mostly retired but still drops by the office now and then and even continues to handle a few long-standing customers.
In his role as mayor of Elk Grove Village, Craig Johnson addresses the media at a press conference. Standing to his left is Elk Grove Police Chief Stephen Schmidt.
Only about 25% of Johnson's book of business is in commercial lines but Johnson does a fair amount of commercial business from Elk Grove Village's sprawling industrial park which, adjacent to O'Hare International Airport, is one of the largest and busiest industrial areas in the nation.
Johnson likes to maintain the high-touch, customer-sensitive service style. It's his practice to talk to any customer at any time and return all phone calls the same day he gets them. "We like to give our customers the personal treatment that's not available from the big cluster agencies," he says. "Our average customer has been with us for 20 years and that's almost unheard of in most agencies. If our customers want to talk to us, they talk to us."
On the government side, he's proven to be a mayor who doesn't shy away from controversial issues or from ruffling feathers when he feels the interests of his community are at stake--even if business suffers in the process.
Johnson frequently finds himself thrust into the center of issues having regional, state and national importance. Disturbed at continuing reports of liquor sales to underage buyers in his suburb, he engineered passage earlier this year of an ordinance to require everyone purchasing package liquor to furnish proof of age, making Elk Grove the first community in Illinois (and one of the first in the nation )to do so. Inquiries have come in from numerous other communities about the ordinance and Johnson frequently urges his brethren in other municipalities to follow Elk Grove Village's lead. "If it saves one person's life, it's worth it," he says.
He has also taken on a high-profile activist role in pushing the position of fellow northwest suburban communities as avowed foes of expansion of O'Hare. If the airport is expanded with new runways, as the major airlines and the city of Chicago want, the often incessant noise from jet traffic over Elk Grove Village and adjoining suburbs threatens to only get worse, numerous Chicago suburbs believe.
To wage the fight, Johnson serves as vice-chairman of the Suburban O'Hare Commission (SOC), an alliance of northwest suburbs that is trying to use the political muscle of its constituencies to stop the O'Hare expansion. Instead, they favor constructing a third regional airport near Peotone, Illinois, southwest of Chicago as the means of relieving the area's air traffic congestion.
Johnson is so prominent in the controversy that he is frequently quoted by the Chicago-area news media as a spokesman for the third airport point of view. Earlier this year, he also joined a contingent of SOC representatives in a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet at the White House with Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card; Congressman Don Young of Alaska, who is ranking majority member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; and Congressmen Henry Hyde and Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Illinois. The meeting was a part of a federal fact-finding effort to get information about the Chicago area's airport needs.
So fervid is Johnson's position on the third airport that in early June he announced his intention to close out some $87 million in accounts containing village funds at four Chicago banks whose executives signed on to a newspaper ad backing runway expansion at O'Hare. Several other O'Hare area suburbs are expected to follow Elk Grove's lead and withdraw their village's funds from those banks.
"That move was designed to send a message about how strongly we feel on the need for a new airport," says Johnson. "That third airport needs to be built. O'Hare has reached the limits of its capacity and the constant increases in airplane traffic and noise are creating a serious quality of life issue in this community and in the whole area." He received numerous calls of support for his action regarding the bank withdrawals. "People were saying, 'Great job, Craig, hit 'em where it hurts.'"
Not everyone has always been pleased, however, with all of the positions he's taken as mayor--and business may have suffered for it. During his first term when the Chicago Bears of the National Football League expressed interest in building a new stadium on a vacant 70-acre site in Elk Grove Village, Johnson said the village should study the matter before saying no. The position only inflamed the passions of anti-stadium forces who roundly criticized Johnson (who actually ended up opposing the deal) for even entertaining the idea of allowing a football stadium to be built in the village. A spate of policy cancellations followed.
Pat Droschak, secretary to the mayor, catches up with Mayor Craig Johnson to check his schedule. Johnson, who runs Johnson Insurance Agency, works one afternoon weekly in City Hall as mayor, in addition to the many hours spent at meetings and functions related to Village business.
But Johnson says as long as business is profitable, the overall welfare of Elk Grove Village comes first. "I'm going to take a stand that's in the best interest of my community and if that means I'm going to upset some people and lose some business, then so be it," he says. "I'm not going to do the job of mayor by putting my finger in the wind and saying, 'This is going to hurt me business-wise.' If that's the case, I have to step away from being mayor and devote full-time to business."
The time constraints and the ethics of the mayor's job have also stunted his agency's growth, Johnson admits. Even though he loves the insurance business, he also relishes public service and politics. With a gigantic and still growing industrial park literally at his doorstep, "we could be a lot bigger," he says. "I could make an awful lot more money but then I wouldn't be able to have the close contact with my clients and no time to be mayor." He further has a strict rule to not handle insurance for anyone doing business with the village so as to avoid even the hint of impropriety.
The public life, coupled with running an agency can be very fulfilling and rewarding, but Johnson advises fellow agents to proceed with caution before jumping into the arena. "It can be overwhelming and stressful unless you can strike a balance between the requirements of the two jobs and your family life."
Working one afternoon a week at village hall, along with attending village board and committee meetings and various other functions, it's not uncommon for Johnson to spend almost as much time on village business as on agency matters.
Johnson advises fellow agents, "If you're considering running for public office, you should start small by running for village trustee, school board, library board or park commissioner instead of going for mayor or board president right away. It's less of a time commitment and you'll be able to gauge how well you adjust to the additional responsibility. You have to think long and hard before you make the commitment because the worst thing you can do is run for office and then quit in mid-term," according to Johnson. "It's not fair to the people who put you into office. You should get your feet wet first and walk before you try and run."
In Johnson's case, with a wife and daughters ages five and 11 and sons ages 13 and 16, there are also family issues to consider. They must be brought into the decision-making process, he says. "Let them know what to expect and incorporate their feelings into your decision. Formulate a plan that will allow you to carve out family time and stick to it rigidly--no agency or village business (not even taking a phone call) during family time."
Likewise, don't let municipal business get in the way of agency time. "If someone calls the office to give an opinion about a municipal matter, tell that person to call the village hall on the day you're scheduled to be there. When you get to the area where you're going to work, commit to that part and focus on it," Johnson says. "That's how you get things done."
The Independent Insurance Agents of America (IIAA) encourages agents to be politically active, particularly as a means to help protect insurance industry interests against adverse legislation and over-zealous state regulators, says Jeffrey A. Myers, vice president of public affairs and public relations for the IIAA. There are currently about 40 members of the U.S. Congress with insurance industry backgrounds and numerous others in state legislatures.
The association also supports the role that agents play as grassroots organizers, mobilizing groups of people to voice their concerns as insurance consumers, he says. "This organization made its hallmark through grassroots activism dating back to the 1930s and it still holds true today."
In the case of involvement in local government, "that's a logical extension of the agent's role as community leader. Large numbers of our members are highly active in their communities from the operations of their businesses to being involved in civic and philanthropic causes in their communities to running local governments. There are varying levels of involvement."
Every two years prior to elections IIAA holds "boot camps" for insurance industry people who are running for public office whether it be state or national office or school board or park commissioner, Myers explains. The two-day sessions, open to agents, or anyone else working in the industry, provide training on techniques of campaign management, set up, media relations, organizing volunteers, "you name it," according to Myers.
"The idea is to arm them with the tools necessary to run a good campaign," he says.
The author
John Maes is a Chicago-area freelance writer.