After years of having to answer questions about his father’s political donations, San Francisco Giants Chairman Greg Johnson seems to have given up on defending his father Charles.
In an appearance on “The TK Show” podcast with Tim Kawakami, Johnson was asked about his father’s political donations, which have skewed heavily toward far-right candidates, and whether they’ve had “any influence on the way this team has been run.” Greg Johnson’s answer completely ignored his father.
“You know, my view is that baseball and sports brings people together of all views and the more we try to go red versus blue to divide orange versus black is a huge mistake,” Johnson said. “And I would say that we should focus on the Giants and baseball and not get into political views.”
It’s a drastically different answer than what Johnson has given in other interviews in the five and a half years since becoming Giants chairman in November 2019. Back in the spring of 2021, the younger Johnson spoke to the Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly in his first interview since taking over the job. In answering several questions about his father’s history of contributions, like the maximum donation in the 2020 election to Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, and the political climate after the Jan. 6 attacks, Greg Johnson vigorously defended Charles.
“I would say that, you know, to judge somebody on a tiny, small political contribution versus the whole picture… nobody has the whole picture,” Johnson said to the Athletic in 2021. “I can tell you that he’s donated 100 [times the amount] of any political contributions to education, to hospitals, to building emergency centers, to low-income housing, to special-needs housing. Those numbers, nobody reads about and nobody talks about. Whatever side you’re on politically, when your biggest dollars are going towards education and hospitals and health care and housing, that should be more important from my perspective.”
Still, Greg Johnson acknowledged in that interview that he hoped his father would “be more targeted and vet more carefully any political donation in the future.” Charles Johnson even made a pledge at that time to “reject and denounce” 2020 election conspiracy theorists and that he wouldn’t support politicians “who do not honor our constitution or who espouse or assist in violence of any kind.” He added that he’d seek a refund from Boebert.
But Charles Johnson did not get that refund from Boebert, and he didn’t stop donating. He lined the coffers of more far-right candidates, contributing again to Boebert and to election denier and former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker on several occasions, along with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and others in the 2022 election cycle.
When Greg Johnson did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser last August, Slusser noted the “promises” that his father “was going to stop making such donations, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.” She asked Greg Johnson if the money had become a problem for the Giants organization. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
“I would say that he’s retired and lives in Florida. As far as any criticism directed toward me, I’d say to people that he’s not involved in the day-to-day operations, and his involvement with the team is more passive,” Greg Johnson said. “It’s just sad to me that he gets painted as some conservative, when this may be one of the nicest, most gentle people you’d ever meet. I believe he is more aligned with our values than the narrative that is in the press.”
Even since that interview in a non-election year, the elder Johnson has continued to make contributions to other far-right political elements, supporting a PAC that promotes reporting schools that teach “critical race theory” earlier this year. (He also vigorously tried — and failed — to stop a clam shack from going up next to his Nantucket home, as SFGATE reported last year.)
Now, it seems as though the son has decided it’s not worth discussing the father, though Kawakami didn’t ask any follow-up questions. The podcast touched on several other topics, including the Giants’ current position in the National League, the team’s financial capabilities after a free-spending offseason, how Greg Johnson evaluates Farhan Zaidi’s tenure as the head of the front office and the botched announcement of the removal of memorial tiles from McCovey Cove, which Johnson acknowledged “could have been handled better.”
Kawakami also asked Johnson about his “somewhat break even” comment from last October, and whether Johnson was “surprised at the backlash he got.”
“It was a naive statement by a control person that learned a lesson, not to use that word ever again and I won’t use that word ever again,” Johnson said. “I was just making a point that we represent a group of investors and we’d rather not lose money every year, but I think what we’ve shown is that this group’s mission is to win championships and we will lose money to do that.”
Kawakami also asked Johnson about the team’s decision not to bring back Renel Brooks-Moon, the team’s longtime public address announcer. Johnson equivocated, saying he has “a lot of confidence in our management team” and supported their decision but otherwise declined to elaborate on the change.
Kawakami followed up by asking whether Brooks-Moon’s political and social statements caused a conflict internally. Johnson said, “Absolutely not. The ownership does not get involved in those kind of decisions, and that would be inappropriate to do that.”
