Mark Green
By Ben Adler, Cara Boekeloo, Calvin College and Zach Marks, Yale University
Tuesday July 10, 2007
 When most Americans think of talk radio, the first people who come to mind are radical right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. Mark Green is trying to change that. In March 2007, Green became president of Air America Radio, a progressive alternative to right-wing radio, where he co-hosts the weekly “7 Days in America” with Arianna Huffington and Bob Kerrey. Green may be best known for his unsuccessful bids for office—for Congress in 1980, for Senate in 1986 and 1998, for mayor of New York City in 2001, and for state attorney general in 2006. But Green has been a constant presence in the progressive political landscape since the 1970s, when he worked as one of “Nader’s Raiders” at Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen. In 1981, Green founded the New Democracy Project, which he led for several years. He was elected New York City’s first public advocate in 1993 and was re-elected 1997. In that office, he led a number of high-profile investigations, including a suit against racial profiling by Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police force. Green sat down with Campus Progress to talk about the current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who may soon become a presidential candidate, the future of progressive political leadership and the future of progressive talk radio.
Campus Progress: Having run against Mike Bloomberg in 2001, do you think he is going to run for president in 2008?
Mark Green: Bloomberg’s engaged in a, living in untruth. You know you’re not supposed to lie, but you’re allowed to say, “Grandma, you look great.” You know? When he says he’s not thinking about running for president, that is an accepted lie. All his people know, all his friends know, every journalist knows he’s considering it. Because as I know better than anyone on the planet, he can buy it fair and square. And trust me; if he says he may spend 500 to a billion, he will spend 2 billion. He once told one of his aides when he was running against me for mayor, “tell me what I have to spend to take the risk out of the equation.” He will decide whether or not to run in February or March of next year once the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees are chosen. My prediction is if Giuliani should be the Republican nominee he would absolutely not run because he would have no real rationale. If Giuliani’s not the nominee, I say there’s a one-in-three to one-in-two chance he might run.
One other thing, I bet no one’s saying, and if you want you can be the first. It’s not just that he’s spending 1 [billion] to 2 billion dollars. He’s not spending it in 50 states. He will only spend it in those states where a five-foot-seven Jewish bachelor billionaire could win. And so he’s not going to spend a dime in Alabama but he’d spend a lot in California and Pennsylvania. So he’s only spending it in 20 states. So per capita that’s a lot of money.
What are your thoughts are about the future progressive political leadership in America in the cities?
There have been two models in the cities. You have had the businessman model, who can treat the public bottom line like a business bottom line, and Bloomberg ran on that. But the larger tradition which we’re probably returning to like Villaraigosa of L.A. and now with the likely successor to Bloomberg in New York is someone who represents an ethnic constituency and is more of a progressive Democrat, because of course cities are more progressive and Democratic than the suburbs or rural areas. So I think we’re going to see going back from kind of law-and-order/business mayors like Giuliani, like Haan in L.A., and more toward I guess what Street was like in Philadelphia and Villaraigosa is like in L.A.
You had mentioned in the Huffington Post on the day you took over Air America—you emphasized dialogue between the sides. I was wondering how you saw Air America advancing this.
Clearly at Air America we are fair and unbalanced. We are an honest version of Fox. Fox is of course unfair and unbalanced, but they won’t admit it. We are fair because we are fact-based, not faith-based. But we’re strong progressives, and why hide it? But because I like exchanges rather than insults, I asked Bob McManus—the op-ed editor of The New York Post—how about one of us writes for you once a month and you come on my air once a week. He didn’t respond. I emailed him this, which is the way I always correspond with him. He then told the journalists, “No, Green wasn’t serious because he didn’t write me about it.” You know, there are a lot of ways to communicate in our society—speak in person, speak on the phone, you can write a letter. There’s this thing called email—which he received my email because he wrote me, emailed me back. So obviously it was a cop-out. Allow me a little tongue more than firmly planted in my cheek.
When the Nevada Democrats refused to go forward with their planned debate, a Democrat[ic] debate hosted by Fox Cable News, Fox screamed in reply, “This is Stalinist and anti-speech.” So I then wrote and it was on the blogs, it was in the Huffington Post, and it was elsewhere—on Drudge, and, believe it or not, The [New York] Post. I wrote a letter to the Republican chairman of the New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada parties: “To [the] Republican chair, ‘I’m Mark Green, I run Air America, I’d like to moderate the Republican presidential debate. I promise I can be as fair and balanced as Fox.’” And you know what they said. You see, Fox has no right to be upset, because while I don’t doubt there are some liberal journalists at CNN and MSNBC as there are conservative journalists, like Glenn Beck, Fox’s whole game plan is to push the conservative cause. In fact, when Fox did host the Republican debate, it was Brit Hume who asked the absolutely ludicrous Jack Bauer question: “If the world depended on you torturing somebody, would you do it?” And a very, very funny response was given by a woman on our network, Rachel Maddow, who is lesbian. She said, “What if he said to in effect, to Brit Hume, ‘Would you engage in homosexual sex?’” Brit Hume would say, “Of course not, I’m straight.” “What if your mother’s life, father’s life and the world depended on it? Would you?” He would say, “OK.” Do you then call him gay? It’s a trick question. And he asked the presidential candidates that and the disgusting thing is that every presidential aspirant in effect said they would favor torture except one—the only one on the stage who suffered it—John McCain.
How do you balance managing the New Democracy Project with running Air America? Is there any overlap there?
It’s ideological overlap because one is a not-for-profit trying to advance progressive ideals and ideas and the other is the only progressive radio network in America. Air America is of course the bulk of my time. I have to make it evolve from red to black so that it survives and thrives. And it’s an exciting and important challenge given the ’08 election cycle and given that, if we fail, then the right-wing radio will say, “You see, they don’t have an audience.” Which is not true, and I’m going to prove it’s not true.
How do you intend to build an audience for Air America and prove that an audience exists for progressive radio?
There are no miracles. We’ve strengthened the lineup, gotten an affiliate sales firm that is gaining us affiliates. We now have a robust web of presence, new capital, new ownership, and new management. President Clinton will be hosting our relaunch party at my home in two nights in New York City for 125 people in the industry. Look, you don’t get a fifth chance to make a second impression, you get a second chance to make a second impression, and we’re in the midst of making it work.
Are you ever going to run for office again?
No. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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