Chris Hansen, Peterborough Native and Washington Lobbyist, on Starting Over After 50
WASHINGTON, April 24–Seniors gained a strong new lobbying voice on Capitol Hill earlier this month when Peterborough native Chris Hansen, a former Boeing Co. executive, signed on as director of advocacy for AARP, the country’s most-powerful interest group for elderly concerns.
Hansen, 53, retired last summer as senior vice president of government relations at Boeing, the country’s largest airplane supplier. But after less than a year of being “intensely bored” in retirement, he accepted a high-profile position with the nonprofit organization AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons). Hansen could pass as the poster image of an AARP member: independent, active and willing to start anew after 50.
Hansen’s newly created post makes him not only the organization’s chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill but also gives him responsibility for overseeing state, grassroots and elections advocacy for AARP’s 35 million members. His position will make him a key voice in Washington on issues such as Medicare reform and prescription drug coverage, Social Security solvency and such consumer protection issues as predatory mortgage lending and telemarketing fraud.
Born in Boston in 1948, Hansen spent his childhood shuttling between Needham and Belmont, Mass., and Peterborough, where he lived from age 9 to 17, while his father managed the W.W. Cross manufacturing plant in Jaffrey.
What Hansen misses most about Peterborough, he says, is the community atmosphere. His childhood memories include weekly church dinners, pitching for the Peterborough Micros baseball team, attending Boy Scout meetings and trout fishing with his father.
While working in Washington, D.C. for Boeing, Hansen never forgot his New Hampshire roots. When the Export-Import Bank of the United States, an independent federal agency which helps support American exports, faced potentially steep budgetary cuts, he told a reporter for The Wall Street Journal that the budget cuts would not only hurt big businesses such as Boeing but would also exact a heavy toll on small businesses and communities. For example, the Micro Ball Bearing plant in Peterborough (now NH Ball Bearing), at the time the city’s largest employer, would have lost a large share of revenue if Boeing, its biggest customer, scaled back its orders.
“I got very emotionaláheck, I used to play for the Micros. I understand what that means for small communities,” Hansen said.
Elizabeth Schwartz, a colleague of Hansen’s for over 15 years, said the lobbyist’s respectful manner was never affected by his powerful position. “Chris didn’t get caught up in the power culture of Washington, D.C. He was always very respectfulá something I think he developed from growing up in a small town in New Hampshire.”
Early on in his career, Hansen’s mother would call every year to ask what his new job position was, responding, “you make it sound like you’re a lobbyist or something.” “As though it were a bad thing,” Hansen laughed, but he admitted that his mother was embarrassed to mention it to friends in her bridge club. He recognizes that the general public “has a phenomenally negative” view of lobbyists, but he admits some of that distrust is well founded. But there are many kinds of lobbyists, Hansen argues, including those that advocate what they consider to be good public policy, such as the issues addressed by AARP.
Hansen believes that his newest post fits well with his experience at Boeing, because “in my mind I was working for the people in both cases.” By opposing European Union subsidies for Airbus, the European civil aircraft manufacturer and Boeing’s principal competitor, he was defending American businesses and jobs, he said. He admitted, however, “that was more true of some issues than others.”
Hansen got his start in lobbying unintentionally while reaching out to his Congressional representatives as a political science undergraduate at the University of Denver during the politically volatile decade of the 1960s.
“I can remember political science professors encouraging us to go on strike, and I didn’t want to go on strike,” he said. “What I did want to do is I wanted to express my views on some things, and I started becoming a big letter writer to Senate offices and congressional offices and started thinking of how to really get involved.”
After completing his graduate studies at the American Graduate School of International Management and after a short stint working for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, Hansen arrived in Washington in 1974, where he represented a group of 20 major international businesses before Congress and the Nixon and Ford administrations while simultaneously helping to direct a small international business trade association.
The next year Hansen joined General Dynamics Corp. and was soon promoted to corporate director, Washington affairs, in which post he managed daily operations in the Capitol and in field offices nationwide.
In May 1986, Hansen joined the Boeing congressional affairs office, where he held a number of positions and worked on issues ranging from space exploration to civil aeronautics. “I was basically stretched all over the place like a dog’s breakfast,” he said.
Of all Hansen’s achievements at Boeing, he is proudest of how he was chosen by the company’s senior leadership to lead the consolidation of the Washington offices of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas Corp., North American Rockwell Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co., Boeing’s former competitors and now its subsidiaries, into a cohesive organization.
“It was actually a very good process, pulling people together who were used to competing with each other, into a teamáit really worked, people really came together,” he said.
During his tenure at Boeing, Hansen worked on developing relationships with Congressional members and their staff, engendering their trust and respect, and proving himself as a nonpartisan, reliable and honest representative of Boeing’s business interests.
Doug Badger, chief-of-staff for Washington State Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn, worked with Hansen on several Boeing projects. “It always helps to have somebody you respect and who has credibility on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Capitol, somebody you can trust to put together a carefully thought-out and coordinated legislative strategy,” Badger said of Hansen.
Denny Miller, a close friend and colleague, said Hansen’s likeability was a necessary element of his success as a lobbyist. “This city is still 90 percent personality and 10 percent substance, and if you’re not able to get in the door to sell a product, you’re certainly not going to complete a sale,” Miller said.
After more than 15 years at Boeing, Hansen decided to take an extended break, but after a few months spent consulting for friends and playing sports, he was ready to begin working again. “I had no idea what I was going to do, butáI was convinced that I was young enough that I could do something different and that I was still young enough to have a career ahead of me and I could learn something new,” he said. “I guess it’s a little bit of an unusual thing to do.”
Hansen lives in Reston, Va., a Washington suburb, with his wife, Linda, 54, an artist, and their dog, Blue. After his two children, Erik, 21, and Jenny, 19, moved out to attend state colleges, Hansen and his wife have been working on building an art studio for her. She is preparing a gallery exhibit.
Hansen visits friends in Keene and Peterborough regularly, though most of his family members now live in Maine. When he does retire, he hopes to improve his golfing abilities, and find a waterfront home in a small town resembling Peterborough.
“I miss the lifestyle,” he said. “We didn’t lock our doors, people took care of each other and it was a much more stable environment. It was a big deal when somebody moved away, and I think by and large most of the people I grew up with still live there. There’s a continuity in the lifestyle there that I appreciate.”
Hansen sees his role in AARP as a personal mission as well. Since he has moved into the age group of those he represents on Capitol Hill, he says, he can easily relate to issues such as social security and health care.
“Our whole system is based on the fact that if you work and you do certain things along the way that there will be a retirement, and there will be medical security, and that you will be able to afford prescription drugs when you need them,” Hansen said. “I think that’s the promise of America.”
The most enjoyable aspect of Hansen’s new career is his conviction that he is having a positive impact on many people’s lives.
“My favorite thing about what I do right now is that I can wake up in the morning and believe that I’m involved in a pursuit where I’m trying to help people. I really think I can make a difference here.”
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire
