Charles Montgomery Johnson—"Gummie" to friends—attended the University of Washington, where he was elected president of its Associated Students organization (A.S.U.W.) in 1946. He graduated with a master's degree in forestry in 1950. Johnson worked in public relations for the Washington Education Association and for Weyerhaeuser, a forest products company, during the 1950s and early 1960s, then directed Dan Evans's successful 1964 campaign for governor of Washington State. He served as the first full-time chairman of the Washington State Republican Central Committee from 1964 to 1971, during which time he was also an executive member of the Republican National Committee.
In 1965 Johnson participated in a purge of John Birch Society members from the state Republican Party. In a newspaper article Johnson commented on his party’s expulsion of this extremist group: "We had to make the term 'conservative' respectable again. The only way to do it was to get the far-right off the backs of conservatives. The Republican Party is not the far-right."
Johnson founded the political consulting firm C. Montgomery Johnson
Associates in 1971, in partnership with his wife, Ann Quantock. Throughout the
1970s and 1980s, he worked as a consultant on a variety of campaigns, such as
Democratic governor Dixy Lee Ray’s unsuccessful bid for reelection in
1980. His work on regional and national issues included abortion rights,
limiting government expenditures, and Indian hunting and fishing rights. From
1990 to 1991, Johnson wrote a guest column for the
The C. Montgomery Johnson Papers comprise 33.52 cubic feet of records, spanning the period 1942 to 1994, with the bulk of the material dating from 1964 to 1980.
The bulk of the correspondence in this accession has been organized in
general correspondence files. Correspondence found in the fully processed
portions of the accession remains in its original subgroup or series.
Correspondence files that were originally found among the unprocessed sections
of the materials have been collected into a single general correspondence
series, found in Box One. This accession also contains a large number of
speeches and writings by both Johnson and others. Included are two drafts of
Johnson’s unpublished book
The Campaign Materials series contains two significant collections of campaign papers. First are the papers from Johnson’s work as the Chairman of the Steering, Policy, and Strategy Committees of the Campaign to Elect Dan Evans in 1963 and 1964. The major components of this series are speeches and writings, surveys, news releases, voting analyses and clippings. These files also include items relating to Evan’s subsequent re-election campaigns (1968 and 1972). The second processed campaign series is the Dixy Lee Ray Campaign material. C. Montgomery Johnson Associates worked on Ray’s unsuccessful bid for re-election as Governor of Washington in 1980. Correspondence, speeches and writings, financial records and a number of subject series make up the bulk of this material. These files also include background information on Ray’s political opponents. The Campaign Materials series also contains material on two 1984 Washington state initiative campaigns, and materials from Johnson’s work for the Yakima Indian Nation in 1977 and 1978.
The Johnson papers include many unsorted subject series, the largest of which is the Abortion series—papers pertaining to various abortion rights campaigns. This series includes material from campaigns around the nation, such as three 1988 campaigns for Colorado’s Amendment 7, Proposal A in Michigan, and Amendment 3 in Arkansas, plus Washington state campaigns such as Initiatives 471 (proposed in 1984), 479 (1986), and 120 (1991). These materials are filed in a subject series because it appears that Johnson observed but did not work on most of these campaigns. There is also a small amount of material on initiative 471 filed in the actual Campaign Materials series. The other subject series reflect research Johnson conducted during his political career. In these series, folder titles and content reflect the original filing system in place when the papers were donated to the Libraries.
The bulk of the Washington State Republican Central Committee subgroup consists of records Johnson created as the Chairman of the Central Committee from 1964 to 1971. This subgroup includes a vast amount of correspondence, several voter surveys and numerous subject series. Among the latter, the most substantial is the material on the John Birch Society. The titles and content in this subgroup reflect the original filing system that was in place when the papers were donated to the library.
Open to all users.
Creator's literary rights transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.
The C. Montgomery Johnson Papers were donated to the University of Washington Libraries by Melissa Johnson on May 3, 1999.
The papers were processed in part in 2000-2001.
39 issues of