When John Stocks began his career in Boise in 1982, he worked to add stop signs in high-traffic neighborhoods and persuade irrigation companies to quit charging people for water they couldn’t get.
“They’d watch the water run right past them while their lawns were drying up,” Stocks said, recalling his early days as a community organizer for Idaho Fair Share.
This month, Stocks reached the highest levels of American political advocacy, becoming executive director of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association. The Washington, D.C.-based NEA is the nation’s largest union, with an annual budget of $371 million and 535 employees, and is vital to the Democratic Party.
“He’s one of the smartest political operatives in the country,” said Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager. “His promotion was one of the biggest no-brainers in American politics.”
Messina, who graduated from Boise High School, relies on Stocks regularly, consulting him recently on the lessons of recall elections in Wisconsin and various labor matters. “He always wants to get to yes, but he’ll tell you when he disagrees, very forcefully. He’s just completely honest.”
Stocks, 54, was in Idaho from 1982 to 1990. He also ran the Citizens Alliance for Progressive Action, was a consultant to the Idaho Education Association on legislative races and was elected to one term in the state Senate before he left to become the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s top lobbyist.
A VISION TO REMAKE AMERICA
David Ripley was Stocks’ partner in a political consulting shop. With the IEA as a client, they engineered Democratic gains in the Senate, culminating in a 21-21 tie in the 1990 election.
“He and I were flamers together,” Ripley said. “We were both pretty absorbed in trying to drag Idaho into the progressive movement.”
Ripley left liberal causes when he changed his views on abortion rights, founding Idaho Chooses Life in 1995. But he still admires Stocks. “He’s a very fine person and a very talented guy. And he’s now one of the archdukes of the Democratic clan.”
Stocks is focused. “Back in those days, I was a heavy-drinking dude and it caused tension between us,” Ripley said. “He just didn’t like that lifestyle. It wasn’t that he was moralistic, but he’s always been self-disciplined.”
Stocks could see years ahead, convincing Democrats they could compete. Now, Ripley says, Stocks will attempt to remake the NEA.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he walks in there with a 20-year plan in his pocket,” Ripley said. “And it won’t be limited to the NEA. He’ll be leveraging the NEA to remake America in his progressive vision.”
GROWING UP PRIVILEGED
Stocks was born in New Orleans. His father, John, was a psychiatrist who made significant advances treating schizophrenia in children. His mother, Clare Bowen Hilliker, was a social worker at a settlement house serving a public housing project. She later became a leader in the Sierra Club, focusing on U.S. exports of herbicides and pesticides to the Third World.
The couple divorced when John — nicknamed “Johno”— was 9. The three kids went to private schools and had an African-American maid, Lucinda Ewell, who cared for them. Ewell was there the day Stocks was born and walked him out the door when he left for college.
Stocks calls Ewell “my other mother,” and his “guardian angel and rock of stability during a tumultuous childhood.” She taught him the power of a good story, the value of hard work and that love could be expressed in the preparation of a meal.
When Stocks was 6, he learned about Jim Crow. Though he was fascinated by the driver on his first streetcar ride, Ewell explained why they couldn’t sit in front. “That day, and in the years to come, I would come to recognize the injustices of institutional racism,” he said.
Deanna Smith has known Stocks since both attended Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash., and came to Idaho to join him in community organizing. “He has strong empathy for the underdog, which isn’t anything he’s ever been,” said Smith, who works for Idaho Smart Growth. “He recognizes that people who have the ability to accomplish things from a position of power should do it.”
A FIERCE URGENCY
Stocks left Boise for Coeur d’Alene to work on utility issues. Hitchhiking, he arrived with a single phone number belonging to Mary Lou Reed.
Reed, who also worked on behalf of ratepayers, became a mentor. In 1984, Stocks helped her win a state Senate seat that she held for 12 years. After Stocks moved to Wisconsin, he returned in 1992 to help Reed win a tough primary. When she turned 80 last fall, he was there.
“He was making friends from the minute he got here,” Reed said. “He doesn’t ever forget anybody. He’s a very warm, loving guy, but he’s very much of a leader.”
His first date with his now-wife of 26 years was in 1984. Connie Hutchison was a teacher from Twin Falls and president of the IEA, in town to help Reed.
“He took me out on the highway and stopped along the road, and he pulled out Mary Lou’s yard signs. I said, ‘Seriously, you are so romantic. How can I ever live without you?’”
The couple has two children in college, J.T. and Emily. Hutchison just finished eight years running Wisconsin’s financial aid agency, which awards $200 million a year to college students.
Stocks never lets up, said his wife, who remained in Wisconsin when Stocks moved to D.C. to work for the NEA in 2003. He commutes home most weekends and attends the kids’ games and theater performances.
“If he needs to talk to you, whether it’s about going to the Packer game or world hunger, it’s the same urgent conversation,” Hutchison said. “When he leaves the kids a message, he says, ‘This is John Stocks, your father.’ He’s such a workaholic.”
IDAHO POLICY
As a lobbyist, Stocks helped persuade the Legislature to bar electric utilities from charging ratepayers for disastrous investments in nuclear plants.
Former Sen. Ron Beitelspacher, an Idaho County Democrat, said Stocks looked a mess in his community-organizer baseball caps and jeans. He did borrow a tie when it came time to testify.
Looks were deceiving, Beitelspacher said: “Hey, in the early ’80s, try to be the person who’s going to try to whip Idaho Power, Washington Water Power, Utah Power and Pacific Power and Light in the Idaho Legislature. He did it. Unbelievable.”
Bill Roden, a legendary lobbyist and former GOP senator, fought Stocks over Roden’s work to deregulate telephones. When Stocks stopped by to chat last month, Roden welcomed him warmly. “We had many wonderful, heated battles,” Roden said. “But he was a great, great guy.”
By 1988, Stocks was ready to run for the Senate himself, unseating Senate Education Committee Chairman Terry Sverdsten, R-Cataldo.
As a measure of his youthful exuberance, Stocks, then 31, made a special trip to leave campaign fliers on Sverdsten’s porch before dawn on Election Day.
“It was to say, ‘I’m going to beat you,’” recalled Roger Sherman, an organizer colleague who was with Stocks that night. Bone tired, they slept in the car before returning to Coeur d’Alene.
Stocks makes $274,000 in his new job and wears button-down shirts from L.L. Bean, crisp ties and $300 Allen Edmonds shoes, his choice because they are American-made, in Wisconsin. He retains a charming Southern modesty, absent the accent. “A lot of people go to D.C. and become arrogant about it,” said Sherman, who remains a friend. “I’ve never seen that in Johno.”
CALLED TO POWER
In his one session in the Legislature, Stocks joined with conservative GOP Sen. Rachel Gilbert of Boise to protect people from losing their homes if they are made indigent by medical costs.
“He likes strange bedfellow coalitions,” said Messina, the Obama loyalist. He said Stocks will be a major influence in reforming the No Child Left Behind law.
When Stocks got the offer in Wisconsin, he leapt at the chance to work in a solidly swing state.
Scott Jensen, a former Wisconsin Assembly speaker, now advises the nation’s leading school-choice group, the American Federation for Children. Though the NEA is his group’s biggest foe, he continues to praise Stocks.
Stocks tried to beat Jensen in his first race, supporting a primary challenger who came within 38 votes. The two later became friends because Jensen admired Stocks’ talent and temperament. “It used to alarm people in the Legislature when there’d be some boring debate on bear hunting and John and I would be standing off the floor, whispering and laughing.”
A pragmatist, Stocks worked with Republicans on tax credits for teachers who buy school supplies for students and school safety issues. He also tried to convince the WEA to support moderate Republicans, Jensen said. “He was trying to change the relationship, but he couldn’t convince the local unions. It wasn’t his fault.”
Stocks also played in presidential politics, doing advance work for every Democratic nominee since 1996. He got noticed by the NEA and was hired in 2003 to work on election strategy. By 2004, the NEA created a new post for him, deputy executive director, with the plan for him to succeed John Wilson.
BACK WITH BADGERS
Early this year, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker moved to strip public employee unions of bargaining power, Stocks was recalled to Madison. He spent 27 days there while Democratic senators retreated to Illinois, helping build crowds that exceeded 100,000 people.
Republican Senate President Mike Ellis welcomed Stocks back, having come to respect his willingness to compromise. “He’d say, ‘Let’s see if we can make the omelette not as bad,’” Ellis recalled.
Ellis invited Stocks to his office in February, telling him the Republicans would ultimately prevail. “We’re going to come after it,” Stocks replied.
“John, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Ellis recalled saying. “I didn’t know he was going to storm the Bastille, poison the well and try to lock us into a stockade. John Stocks is a pain in the ass, and you can print that.”
Republicans finally did beat the unions — as they also did in Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
Stocks said the NEA will push back, including in Idaho, where three referendums are on the 2012 ballot to repeal Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s Students Come First laws.
THE IDAHO SPUD
Bruce Reed, Sen. Reed’s son, worked in the Clinton White House and now is chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden. He said Stocks’ success is rooted in his early years in Idaho.
“Most everything I know about politics I learned from handing out Democratic bumper stickers at county fairs,” Reed said. “Idaho is a great place to learn this business because it’s so hard. Anyone who’s gone door-to-door in Idaho understands the healthy skepticism of the American voter, which is a prerequisite to having any chance of understanding the American people.”
Stocks used to sing “There Never Was a Tater Like the Idaho Spud” to entertain fellow organizers. Asked if he’ll pay disproportionate attention to helping the IEA in 2012, he grinned and said, “Idaho has a significant place in my heart. How’s that?”
As Ripley, his former partner, suggested, Stocks has big plans.
“Our organization has been too isolationist,” Stocks said. “We need to deepen our relationships with parents, with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement and with the business community. It is in businesses’ interest to have a highly educated workforce in a knowledge economy.”
Stocks said the country is in “crisis,” in part because of the growing gap between rich and poor. “We believe that’s a threat to the democracy. The union has a responsibility to engage the broader populace in a conversation about what kind of country we want to have.”
How? “We have a very robust infrastructure, with staff and affiliates across the country. We will begin training them to reach out beyond the membership and identify how to work in the community, not unlike what I did here in Boise.”
Dan Popkey: 377-6438
