Mark Joseph Green (born March 15, 1945) is an American author, former public official, public interest lawyer, and Democratic politician from New York City. Green was New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner from 1990 to 1993 and New York City Public Advocate from 1994 to 2002.
Green won Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and mayor of New York City, in each case losing the general election.
Early life and education
Green was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. He lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, until he was three and then moved to Long Island, first to Elmont, New York, and later Great Neck, New York. Both his parents were Republicans; his father was a lawyer and residential apartment landlord and his mother a public-school teacher.
Green graduated from Great Neck South High School in 1963, from Cornell University in 1967 and in 1970 from Harvard Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. He has a brother, realtor Stephen L. Green, founder of SLGreen Realty Corp.
Political career
1960s – 1970s
In 1967, Green interned for Jacob Javits, and while in law school in the early 1970s, was a "Nader's Raider" at Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, where he worked on a lawsuit against the Richard Nixon administration after the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. After law school, Green returned to Washington, D.C., and ran the Congress Watch division of the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen from 1977 to 1980. In 1976, he managed former U. S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's campaign for the Senate seat of James Buckley. Clark came in third, behind Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Representative Bella Abzug. Moynihan went on to win the office and serve four terms in the Senate.
1980s
In 1980, Green returned to New York City and won the Democratic primary election to represent the East Side of Manhattan in the House of Representatives; he lost the race to Republican incumbent Bill Green (no relation). In 1981, Green and songwriter Harry Chapin founded the New Democracy Project, a public policy institute in New York City. Green ran it for a decade. During the 1984 presidential election, he served as chief speechwriter for Democratic candidate Senator Gary Hart, who ran second in the primaries.
In 1986, Green won the Democratic nomination for the Senate against multimillionaire John Dyson, spending just $800,000 to Dyson's $6,000,000. Dyson remained on the ballot as the candidate of the Liberal Party. Green lost the general election to Republican incumbent Alfonse D'Amato, who was supported by then mayor Ed Koch; Green filed a formal ethics complaint in the Senate Ethics Committee against D'Amato that resulted in D'Amato's being reprimanded by the Senate after media reports that suggested that his nomination as a chair of the Senate Committee of Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs had been tainted by illegal financing of his Senate campaign.
During his Senate campaign, Green refused to accept money from special interest groups' political action committees (PACs) – which had accounted for 25% of all campaign spending in Congressional campaigns in 1984 – denouncing PACs as "legalized bribery." His opinion mirrored the stance of Common Cause, the citizens' lobby that organized to abolish PACs over fears of "special interests" buying votes.
1990s
In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins appointed Green Consumer Affairs Commissioner of New York City. Green was elected as the first New York City Public Advocate in 1993 and reelected in 1997. In that office, he led investigations of HMOs, hospitals, and nursing homes that led to fines by the New York State Attorney General.
A 1994 investigation on the Bell Regulations ("Libby Zion Law") to limit resident working hours and requiring physician supervision and a follow-up study prompted the New York State Department of Health to crack down on hospitals. Green led an effort against tobacco advertising aimed at children, enacting a law banning cigarette vending machines, and released a series of exposés and legal actions against tobacco advertising targeting children—concluding that R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was engaged in "commercial child abuse"—that culminated in a 1997 Federal Trade Commission decision that ended the Joe Camel ads.