Capitol Spotlight: Robert Hanna, Assembly Republican Caucus

Working in the midst of a fast-paced environment with different requests coming at him all the time, Robert Hanna sometimes feels like an air traffic controller.

As manager of the Office of Member Support and Outreach for the Assembly Republican Caucus, Hanna works with many different departments connected to legislative research, communication strategy, and policy analysis daily to meet the everyday needs and requests asked of his team from all 18 Republican member offices.

“Every day is like a puzzle, and we figure out what we are going to do to complete that puzzle as a team,” said the Roseville resident, who has worked in the office for 12 years.

The great-great grandson of John Muir, Hanna also has a big family who keeps him busy outside of work. He and his wife met in junior high and have four daughters ranging from age eight to a freshman in high school.

Elizabeth Hanretty, a graphic designer for the Republican caucus, calls Hanna the best boss she has ever had. “He empowers his employees, she said. “He’s not a micromanager. He doesn’t tell us what to do.”

She appreciates how he asks employees every day to rate their mood on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the happiest. If someone gives a low score, he asks how he can help bump that number up by changing up the workload. “I’m very thankful that he is so understanding and flexible with the things we have to do,” she said.

Hanna’s relationship to Muir comes through Muir’s daughter Wanda, who was Hanna’s great-grandmother. Like Muir, Hanna loves the outdoors, though he doesn’t get to enjoy it as much as he would like. “I used to lead backpack trips for 70 miles through the back country of Yosemite,” he said.

Hanna, who started his career in the corporate world, said most people don’t realize that Muir was also a successful businessman, who had millions of dollars when he died in 1914. Hanna’s family has preserved records of Muir’s ventures, which included running his father-in-law’s 2,600-acre ranch “I’ve even gone back and used stuff from his business mind into my own systems,” Hanna said.

Hanna attended community college (Sierra College) but never graduated, and said he has no regrets. “My time in corporate America was the best business school you could go through,” he said, adding that he had to run branches, build teams, grow team and motivate salespeople.

“Every day is like a puzzle, and we figure out what we are going to do to complete that puzzle as a team.”

Before working at the Capitol, Hanna climbed the ladder at SecurityNational Mortgage Company for over a decade. He started out answering phones, and by the end, he was national sales director, responsible for the company’s growth, production and development of the sales team.

Linda Richardson, his mentor at the firm, said she first learned of him when he was a shoe salesman. A friend was so impressed with his sales skills that he recommended Hanna be interviewed for the mortgage job.

“Robert is a gifted, talented man,” she said. “He loves people and people love him.”

But in 2011, he suddenly lost his job when the company had to shut down its wholesale lending division, which was his division. He and his wife had just welcomed their second daughter, making it a particularly scary moment. “It was the first time corporate America punched me,” he said.

By chance, he got a call from someone he knew at the Capitol who suggested the position with the Assembly Republican Caucus. It was a welcome change of pace from his previous job with regular hours and weekends off.

“In corporate America, I was traveling four days a week,” he said. “I was flying across the country Monday-Thursday.”

He had also seen that many of the most successful people in the business world didn’t have good relationships with their families. “I didn’t want to be that,” he said. “As scary as it was losing my job, it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me.’

Hanna said he doesn’t mind being a member of a minority party in such a heavily Democratic state. In the business world, he always had to work with people with different philosophies and opinions. “At the end of the day, our job was to come together and find solutions,” he said.

At the top of his mind is trying to help those around him grow and achieve their goals. Though he misses them, he is happy when talented staff members move on to other positions.

Rose Rastbaf, who used to work with him and now works as a policy consultant with the Republican Office of Policy and Budget, said she appreciates Hanna’s positive energy. “He cultivated a fun yet productive work environment,” she said. “That led to a high degree of success in our work product because there was such a high degree of trust among us.”

Hanna said he is a morning person who wakes up every day “shot out of a cannon.” He typically gets up at 4:30 a.m. and then works out by 5:15 a.m. His family is everything to him and he enjoys cheering his kids’ activities, which for most of them involves softball. “I leave work, I go to a softball field and repeat,” he said.

He tries to live every day with purpose and focus. “An unproductive day is one you’ll never get back,” he said.