Tim Johnson, Senator Who Came Back From an Aneurysm, Dies at 77

One of the last Democrats from the Great Plains to be elected to national office, he built his career on delivering benefits to his home state, South Dakota.

Tim Johnson, a Democratic senator from South Dakota who suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006, throwing his party’s narrow majority into question for months, then not only returned to work but also won a third term, died on Tuesday in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was 77.

A spokesman for his family said the cause of his death, at a hospice facility, was complications of a stroke.

The descendant of Norwegian immigrants, Mr. Johnson was a quiet workhorse who found himself unwillingly pushed into the national political spotlight in December 2006, shortly after the Democrats gained a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

During a news conference in Washington, he began to slur his words and grew disoriented. He was rushed to a hospital, where doctors found that a rare birth defect had left the blood vessels in his brain weakened and tangled, resulting in sudden catastrophic bleeding.

He underwent surgery and remained in an induced coma for weeks. Capitol Hill waited anxiously; if he died or decided to resign, South Dakota’s Republican governor, Mike Rounds (now a senator), would most likely replace him with a Republican, which would have created an even split in the Senate, with Vice President Dick Cheney as the tiebreaker.

Defying many doctors’ expectations, Mr. Johnson not only survived but thrived. He returned to Capitol Hill in September 2007, using a scooter. He spoke more slowly and had lost some control of his right side, but he insisted that his mind was as good as ever.

“I will promise you that when my speech is back to normal, I will not act like a typical politician and overuse the gift,” he told a crowd in Sioux Falls during his first visit back to South Dakota after his hospitalization. “Of course, I believe I have an unfair edge over most of my colleagues right now — my mind works faster than my mouth does.”

He cut back his television appearances, but he also learned to write with his left hand and got a new driver’s license, after having his car fitted with special controls.

And he made it clear that he was not done with politics. He ran for re-election in 2008 and won handily, a reflection of both his perseverance and voters’ respect for him, despite his state’s reddening politics.

“He had a Norwegian doggedness,” John Lauck, a historian and adviser to Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said in an interview. “It was a very bricks-and-mortar, common-sense politics that he practiced.”

Timothy Peter Johnson was born on Dec. 28, 1946, in Canton, S.D., a small town along the border with Iowa. His father, Vandel, and his mother, Ruth (Ljostveit) Johnson, were teachers.

He graduated in 1969 with a degree in political science from the University of South Dakota, where he went on to receive a master’s degree in the same subject in 1970 and a law degree in 1975.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara (Brooks) Johnson, whom he met in college; their children, Brooks Johnson, Brendan Johnson and Kelsey Billion; his brother, Tom; his sister, Julie Spencer; and eight grandchildren.

Mr. Johnson practiced law in Vermillion, S.D., in the southeast corner of the state, before winning a seat in the State House of Representatives in 1979. From there he steadily climbed the political ladder, winning seats in the State Senate in 1982 and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986.

He ran for Senate in 1996; his victory over his Republican opponent, Larry Pressler, made him the only challenger to defeat a Senate incumbent that year.

Mr. Johnson ran on what became his signature stance: a head-down, hard-working centrism that delivered significant benefits to his state in the form of agriculture and infrastructure funds, but that his liberal colleagues occasionally chafed at. He opposed abortion rights, supported President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2002 and voted to authorize the Iraq war that same year.

He took that last vote with some trepidation, he said; his older son, Brooks, was serving in the 101st Airborne, making Mr. Johnson the only senator in the chamber with a child in the active-duty military.

He nevertheless faced a stiff challenge that fall from Mr. Thune, who was then a representative. Mr. Thune had been planning a run at Mr. Johnson for years, and he led by several points in early polls.

Mr. Johnson bore down, out-fund-raising Mr. Thune and aligning himself with the powerful Tom Daschle, his fellow South Dakota senator and the Democratic majority leader. The election was close enough to require a recount, which Mr. Johnson won by 528 votes. (Two years later, Mr. Thune defeated Mr. Daschle for the state’s other Senate seat.)

As he accrued seniority, Mr. Johnson joined the Appropriations, Energy and Banking committees. He used those positions to deliver earmarks to South Dakota and strengthen his support in the state.

And, despite his aisle-crossing tendencies, he remained popular among his Senate peers. He returned to the Senate floor on Sept. 5, 2007, to raucous applause from both sides of the chamber.

In what now sounds like a moment from the distant past, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, praised the Republicans for not taking advantage of Mr. Johnson’s health. His statement drew a standing ovation from Mr. Reid’s fellow Democrats.

Mr. Johnson decided not to run for re-election in 2014. He was part of a wave of old-guard senators retiring that year, including Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey; Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia; and John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia. He was the last Democrat to hold statewide office in South Dakota.