Native returns to run in mayoral primary

John Hamilton is a Bloomington native, but the candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary likes to move. And he doesn’t spend much time in any one place.

Since he got his political start working in the unsuccessful 1972 campaign to elect Democrat George McGovern to the presidency, Hamilton has been living a life closely associated with government.

He has worked in political campaigns and government administration at the national, state and local levels, as well as on community development projects.

Hamilton’s wife, Dawn Johnsen, a professor at the IU Maurer School of Law, worked for former President Clinton’s administration.

“I think Dawn and I both feel lucky to have had the opportunity to serve in the jobs we have,” he said. “We’re both very committed to progressive causes and when opportunities have arisen to serve, we have felt that when we could serve, we wanted to.”

But no matter where Hamilton’s career and personal aspirations have taken him — from half-year excursions to Africa to the poorest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. — Hamilton said he got his start in Bloomington, where his father founded St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.

“I grew up in a church that focused a lot on what your responsibility is in the world,” he said. “I believe that our responsibility is to leave it better than we found it and to do all we can to improve the lot of those whom fortune has not smiled upon.”

Despite the importance of his childhood on his political opinions and aspirations, Hamilton had no intention to become a politician when he graduated high school.

At Harvard University, Hamilton studied philosophy. When he graduated he worked several of what he called “menial jobs.” That’s when he first seriously considered law school and potentially politics.

“I always have had a deep interest in social justice and how we form communities and how we take care of each other and how we create a successful community,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to law school from my time in college, but I became interested in that and I loved law school.”

He found out he had been accepted to IU’s law school while traveling in Africa, another one of his passions. He said he wanted to see parts of the world where people were less fortunate.

“That kind of lesson can be very poignant in a very poor country where you see the kids and young people and grown-ups who have the exact same dreams and aspirations and hopes and fears that we do and yet so much less opportunity,” Hamilton said.

After graduating from law school, Hamilton took a one-year clerkship with a federal judge in Chicago, where he first met Johnsen. She later headed to Washington, D.C., and he returned to Indianapolis, where he worked for a law firm.

Less than one year later, Hamilton switched jobs again.

Democrat Evan Bayh had just won the Indiana governorship, and Hamilton was offered a job by then-Lt. Gov. Frank O’Bannon.

“There was going to be a lot of energy and innovation at that time to try to modernize state government and address some issues that hadn’t been addressed in environmental protection and economic justice,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton worked in O’Bannon’s office for four years and worked his way up to the lieutenant governor’s chief of staff. During that time he worked on affordable housing and environmental protection policy, among other things.

“During this period, Dawn and I had become a couple,” Hamilton said. “We had a long distance relationship for a while ... It became clear one of us was going to have to move.”

Hamilton decided Johnsen had better opportunities in Washington than he did in Indianapolis, so he moved to the East Coast and decided to start a community development bank.

“I knew a bit about community development and community development finance and felt that having a financial institution, a bank, that would bring money into the neighborhoods that for so long had had money sucked out of them would be very important,” he said.

Hamilton spent the next five years raising funds to start City First Bank, which he said specifically targeted funding projects in areas of the city that no other financial institution would pay attention to.

The bank opened in 1998 and Hamilton said it has funded hundreds of millions of dollars of housing and community development projects.

Meanwhile, Johnsen was working as an adviser for the Clinton administration.

In 1996, after O’Bannon was elected Indiana governor, Hamilton was asked to return to run the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Later, he would head the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration for Gov. O’Bannon.

“I woke up every day energized about how do we do this better,” he said. “Basically we worked with one out of every eight people in Indiana or supported one out of eight people at FSSA.”

In 2000 Hamilton ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives seat in Indiana’s 8th District, which at that time included Bloomington.

After O’Bannon died in office in 2003, Hamilton returned once more to Bloomington from Indianapolis, where he helped run City First with monthly trips to Washington and served on several community boards. These included the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability, the Monroe County Community School Corporation Board of Trustees and the founding board of the Shalom Center.

He left the state once more in 2009 when Johnsen was appointed by President Obama to one of the top national security and legal advising roles.

“The nomination by the President Elect Obama was exciting and an amazing opportunity for Dawn,” Hamilton said. “We are a dual career family and we have to balance each of our career tracks and different opportunities that come up.”

But Johnsen was never confirmed for the role by the U.S. Senate. In 2010, the family returned to Bloomington, and Hamilton said he’s glad to be back.

“I have loved Bloomington since I was a little kid,” he said. “It is an amazing city where I am very excited about the opportunities to bring a lot of the ideas that I’ve gathered over state jobs and the national jobs and the neighborhood jobs and the experience I have to help move the city forward.”

When he’s not working on the campaign, Hamilton said he spends time with his two sons playing tennis and chess and making music.

He travels when he can but said there are plenty of opportunities to experience the world in Bloomington.

“A neat, small city of 70,000 people that has the international flavor that we do is a rare and great treat for all of us,” Hamilton said. “Raising kids in Bloomington just feels like such a blessing, and we want to do all we can to make sure it stays that way.