William J. Green, III
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William J. Green, III, (born June 24, 1938), the son of U.S. Representative William J. Green, Jr., was elected at the minimum age permitted, twenty-five, to the United States House of Representatives in a special election in April 1964, called following the death of Green's father in December 1963.
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[edit] Youth
Bill Green was born in Philadelphia and attended St. Joseph’s Prep School; B.A., St. Joseph’s College, 1960; attended Villanova Law School; elected chairman of the Philadelphia County Executive Committee; elected as a Democrat, by special election a special election on April 28, 1964, to the Eighty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father, William Joseph Green, Jr.; reelected to the six succeeding Congresses and served from April 28, 1964, until January 3, 1977; was not a candidate in 1976 for reelection to the Ninety-fifth Congress but was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate against H. John Heinz.
Green was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1979. He served from January 7, 1980, to January 2, 1984. He was not a candidate for reelection in 1983 because Mrs. Green became pregnant at the start of the primary. He resumed the practice of law, became a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and still has a house in Philadelphia.
Young Bill Green grew up in an atmosphere influenced by the gritty working class surroundings of the his father's base in the Kensington neighborhood's 33rd Ward with his brothers and sisters; Mary, Anne, Michael, Dennis and Patrick. This upbringing gave them extraordinary access to top Democratic leaders. The Harry Truman Library website, for instance, contains a picture of the Green family meeting with Harry Truman in the White House. And the Kennedy records have frequent mention of the senior Green.
[edit] Congressional career
Upon his election to Congress, Green and his wife Pat moved to Frankford, and Green began compiling a record of competence, eloquence, and inspirational leadership that shocked and impressed some of his early opponents, one of whom had derided him as "the student prince." Green was so admired in fact, that the McGraw-Hill book company picked him to write a book about in 1969 for their A Week With... Series. The books, written for Children, profiled a week with people in a variety of jobs. Green's book was titled The Congressman: William Green.
As a congressman in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society era, Green took leadership on issues such as meat inspection, rat control, and tax reform, including leading the charge in Congress to eliminate the oil depletion allowance. He voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, and the Medicare Act of 1965, other pieces of President Johnson's sweeping program of domestic reform, and was one of the original co-sponsors of the Equal Rights Amendment. He had a 100 percent rating for his fourteen years in Congress from the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and the Americans for Democratic Action.
For Green, however, the call of Philadelphia politics was strong. He served from December, 1967 through December, 1969 in his father's old post as Democratic city chairman but resigned after the Democratic City Committee refused to adopt a reform plan that he issued following a Republican sweep led by District Attorney and later U.S. Senator Arlen Specter.
An unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia in 1971, losing to former Police Commissioner Frank L. Rizzo's "law and order" candidacy, Green was placed in the same district as Congressman James A. Byrne, in office since 1952. In the 1972 congressional redistricting, Green's opponents tried to gerrymander him out of his seat. The newly merged district had voted heavily for Rizzo in the mayoral election and had been represented mainly by Byrne, for whom Rizzo campaigned actively. Green's dynamism and grass-roots organization from his mayoral campaign, however, enabled him to win decisively. He was then easily re-elected in the overwhelmingly Democratic year of 1974.
Appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee in December, 1967, Green faced a long wait to the top under the seniority system. As it turned out, not until mid-1994 would he have become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and the Republicans gained a majority in the House that year.
[edit] Senate Campaign
In 1976, U.S. Senator Hugh Scott, then the Senate Republican leader, announced his retirement after being tarred in a campaign finance scandal and facing pressure from fellow Republicans Arlen Specter and John Heinz, who each coveted his seat.
Backed by Governor Milton J. Shapp, Green won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator. He defeated State Senator Jeannette Reibman of Northampton County. Green's fundraising skills, however, proved to have been no match for the millions in the Heinz ketchup-and-pickle fortune that Heinz, after having defeated Arlen Specter in the Republican Senate primary, was able to spend against him. Heinz's ads blasted Green voting against defense budgets that Green considered to be too high, implying that Green was opposed ideologically to American defense. Political cartoons of the time show Heinz pouring money from a giant ketchup bottle over Green's head. Even so, with Carter at the top of the Democratic ticket, Heinz barely reversed the Democratic tide to defeat Green, 52-48 percent.
After his defeat for the Senate, Green won admission to the Pennsylvania bar, and moved out of his district to the Germantown section of Philadelphia -- in the home of his mother-in-law Margaret Sharpless Kirk -- with his wife and children: Bill, Kate, and Anne. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the neighborhood of Chestnut Hill, and practiced law with the leading Philadelphia law firm of Wolf, Block, and Schorr.
[edit] As Mayor
He declined a bid to run for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania in 1978, and won the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia in 1979, defeating runner-up Charles Bowser, a former Deputy Mayor and the strongest African-American candidate the city had up to that point. Other candidates for the nomination, former City Controller William Klenk and former Commerce Director Al Gaudiosi, withdrew near the end of the primary.
In the general election, Green defeated former U.S. Attorney David W. Marston, the Republican who had been dismissed in 1977 as United States Attorney by the Carter administration, and former City Councilman Lucien Blackwell, a future U.S. Congressman and the Consumer Party nominee, to win election as mayor.
Green's term as mayor is widely seen as a great example of leadership regardless of political cost. He was required to balance the city budget which was at a record high $285 million dollar deficit inherited from his predecessor Frank Rizzo. This is still the largest deficit any incoming Mayor has had to deal with. The resulting disputes with municipal labor unions, open battles with City Council, quiet disputes with campaign contributors, and an adverserial relationship with the mass media reportedly took a toll on him. "Reporters are the type of people who tore the wings off flies when they were young," he said. His efforts at balancing the budget were successful however, and for the first time in years new business was coming to Philadelphia. Philadelphia created net new jobs during the Green administration and no Mayor since can make this claim. Philadelphia won a national marketing award during the Green administration. In a city divided by race, Green appointed the first African-American Managing Director, aggressively supported Joe Coleman as the first African-American President of City Council and appointed the first African-American Superintendent of the Philadelphia Public Schools. One member of his cabinet was the first female City Solicitor of the City of Philadelphia. The Green administration brought young talent into the City government. Chaka Fattah received his first government job in Green's Commerce Department which was headed by Dick Doran. Ed Deseve, Green's Finance Director, went on to head the Office of Budget in the Clinton Administration. Bill Marrazo, a Green Commissioner, is President of WHYY, public television in Philadelphia.
Green decided not to seek re-election during the Democratic Primary and concentrate on his family when his wife Patricia became pregnant. Pat Green was 40 and Green feared for her health and the health of his unborn child if she faced the stress of a political campaign during the pregnancy. After his youngest child, Maura Elizabeth Green, was born near the end of his term at a healthy 10 pounds and 12 ounces Green declared, "I am the winner," of the 1983 mayoral contest, in which he was not a candidate.
Materials in Mayor Green's City Archives files include correspondence, reports, and other materials relating to the various city departments, boards, commissions, and other city offices. Information is also available on the General Business Tax, the Mayor's Tax Committee, the Mayor's Scholarship Program of 1979-1980, cable TV, Century IV celebration, CETA, the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, energy, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Strike of 1981, the Educational Nomination Panel of 1981-1982, Mayor's and Cabinet members' schedules for 1980-1982, Conversation Hall renovations which were started by Green, council legislation, Freedom Festival, among many other topics. These records can be found in the City Archives, 3101 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
[edit] Post-Mayoral Career
After his term as Mayor expired, Green practiced law, opened two restaurants in the emerging Manayunk section of Philadelphia, and passed up opportunities to run for the U.S. Senate in 1986 and 1991. He established himself as a Washington, D.C. lobbyist, and purchased a home in suburban Virginia.
(Congressman Robert Edgar of Delaware County and Auditor General and former Congressman Don Bailey of Westmoreland County also wanted to seek the Democratic nomination against Arlen Specter in 1986. Edgar eventually defeated Bailey in the Democratic primary, but lost to Specter in the general election. In 1991, after Senator Heinz's death, Governor Robert P. Casey had conducted a long public search for a replacement for Heinz, offering the post to Green after others, including Lee Iacocca, had declined, and publicly demanding that Green refuse any of the considerable severance pay from his employer that he was legally entitled to as a condition of his appointment. Casey ultimately settled upon his Secretary of Labor and Industry Harris Wofford, whose upset of former U.S. Attorney General and Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh helped launch political consultants James Carville and Paul Begala on the national political scene.)
In the late 1980s, 1990s and early 21st Century, Green pursued a successful career Vice President of Government Relations for MacAndrews & Forbes, Ronald Perlman's Holding company for ~ 50 coorporations including Revlon. Always a man of rigid integrity and moral character (one of the targets in the ABSCAM scandal urged FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks not to seek to bribe Green because "he's a boy scout"), Green was not involved when President Bill Clinton sought a job with Revlon though Revlon board member Vernon Jordan for Monica Lewinsky.
Around 2003, Green retired from MacAndrews & Forbes and returned with his wife to Philadelphia, where he has kept a low political profile. Ironically, some of his associates while he was mayor have dominated Republican mayoral politics in the decades since he has left office, but none has won election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
His son, William J. "Bill" Green, IV, was elected to Philadelphia City Council in 2007.
| Preceded by William J. Green, Jr. |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 5th congressional district 1964-1973 |
Succeeded by John H. Ware, III |
| Preceded by James A. Byrne |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district 1973-1977 |
Succeeded by Raymond F. Lederer |
| Preceded by Frank Rizzo |
Mayor of Philadelphia 1980–1984 |
Succeeded by Wilson Goode |
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