Hans Johnson

Hans has helped labor and nonprofit organizations and coalitions expand their fund-raising, advocacy, and voter-turnout capacity. Through Progressive Victory, networks serving the health-care, transportation, human-service, and disability communities have realized gains in revenue, voter engagement, and political power. In 2006, a voter-turnout program designed by Progressive Victory yielded increases in voter turnout between 25 and 66 percent among voters contacted. Starting in 2002, he served as chief consultant of the Democracy Project of the Gill Foundation. The nonpartisan project helped nearly 400 state and national organizations varying widely in program sophistication to understand the extent of their rights and responsibilities in the democratic process and to update and target their databases to enable a louder, more unified voice for more than 14 million gay people and allies in the policy debate. In 2004, voluntary nonpartisan collaborations between national and state organizations in the Democracy Project proved useful to allies of equality, who gained seats in 12 of the 15 states served by the project. In 2006, vote-by-mail projects involving Project organizations contributed to increased turnout in two states. Coalitions in two other states used their improved data to defeat anti-abortion ballot measures. In addition, Project organizations in 13 states used their improved data for nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts, most effectively targeting voters shown to have voted infrequently in prior elections. In Minnesota, for instance, compared with a similar election four years earlier, turnout among voters targeted by its nonpartisan program rose more than 300 percent.

Before taking on this challenge, Hans helped lead list-development and communications efforts for the nation's largest and fastest growing union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). As a columnist, his work appears at In These Times magazine, where he is a contributing editor, and the Huffington Post. He is a regular guest on "The Young Turks." He serves on the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation.

Hans is a native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and a graduate of the College of Wooster, in Ohio, where he organized and led a fund-raising campaign to secure the endowment of the John Plummer Memorial Scholarship. The annual prize  recognizes significant contributions by any student to a more welcoming campus environment for gay people. His partner is Luis Lopez, and Hans spends significant time in both Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

 

Hans Johnson is president of Progressive Victory, a consultancy based in Washington, D.C. He has advised organizations and campaigns in every state of the union, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, and Canada. He has a winning record in coordinated, community-based action fueled by knowledge of the local and national political landscapes, Congress, and state legislatures. He has worked closely with leaders of nearly every constituency in civil society, including labor, business, banking, consumer advocacy, transportation, environmentalism, immigrants, good-government, disability, civil rights, education, philanthropy, media, arts, and moderate and progressive religious institutions. He is an expert on labor, gay rights, religious extremism, and trends in state politics, ballot measures, and strategies of absentee and precinct voting.