Maxine Isaacs

Maxine Isaacs is one of three children of Amy Isaacs (née Jacobson)[1] and Bernard Isaacs of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Her father was a naval officer who was selected to help train the Golden Thirteen, the first African-American candidates to become U.S. Navy officers. After the war, he became a representative for a plumbing and heating supplies manufacturer. He was also involved in politics and the civil rights movement.[2] Maxine said her political views came from her father who was a Hubert Humphrey supporter.[3] Her father was Jewish and experienced antisemitism while growing up in a mostly Polish-American town in Wisconsin where many people harbored pro-Nazi sentiments.[4] She graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1965.[5] She then graduated in 1969 with an AB in American studies from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.[6][7][8] After graduating from Skidmore, she lived in Japan for about a year.[6][9]

In 1971, Isaacs was hired to be legislative assistant, press secretary, and speechwriter for Representative Louis Stokes, a Democrat from Ohio.[6][7][9] In 1973, she transferred to Walter Mondale's U.S. Senate office to become the Minnesota senator's deputy press secretary.[6][7] When Mondale's 1974 exploratory presidential campaign came to an end, she became a freelance writer for NPR and The Africa Report. She rejoined Mondale's vice presidential campaign staff in 1976 when Jimmy Carter asked Mondale to serve as his running mate.[7][8]

Mondale was elected as vice president in the 1976 presidential election, and Isaacs became his deputy press secretary in the White House.[6][7] Isaacs often traveled with the Vice President as he went on diplomatic missions around the world.[6] In the 1980 reelection campaign for Mondale and Carter, she served as traveling press secretary in a campaign which accumulated more than 200,000 miles (320,000 kilometers) of travel between September 1979 and November 1980. The Carter ticket lost the 1980 presidential election.[10]

In the early 1980s, she ran her own public relations consulting firm, Maximum Inc., in Washington, D.C.[7] In February 1981, she announced the formation of an exploratory committee for Mondale's possible candidacy in the 1984 presidential election.[11] Isaacs became deputy campaign manager and press secretary for Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign.[9] After his loss to Ronald Reagan, Mondale ended his political career and returned to practicing law.[12][13]

In 1988, she graduated with a master's degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University.[8] In 1994, she earned a Ph.D. from the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland (UMD) in College Park. Her dissertation was a comparative study of elite and public opinion on foreign policy.[8][13] The same year, she became a lecturer on public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[14] She has taught courses at Harvard, and occasionally at George Washington University and New York University, on the relationship between the media and politics, with a special focus on U.S. presidential campaigns and elections.[8]

In 2014, Isaacs was inducted into the hall of fame of Shaker Heights High School.[5] In 2019, she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from her alma mater, Skidmore College, where she serves as a trustee.[15] Isaacs also served as a board member of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.[8]

Isaacs was married for eight years before her divorce in 1977.[7] In 1985, she married James A. Johnson, the former chairman of Mondale's presidential campaign. They had a son, Alfred Johnson.[14][16] The couple separated in 2010[17] and subsequently divorced.[16]

Isaacs has been interested in theater from a young age. In 2004, she became a board member of Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. She co-chaired the theatre's capital campaign to fund its move to a new facility in Shirlington.[18] The Signature Theatre's main stage, the Max, is named for Isaacs.[19] She also serves as a trustee of the American Associates of the Royal National Theatre. She formerly served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Folger Shakespeare Library.[8]