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Subject: Former Congressman Bill Green

Author: Dies at 72

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: October 17, 2002 5:56:29 EDT Bill Green, a United States representative from Manhattan who served for seven terms and was dedicated to the liberal Republican tradition of Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Senator Jacob K. Javits, died on Monday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He was 72. The cause was liver cancer, his daughter Catherine Green said. Mr. Green achieved the delicate balancing act of pleasing both his fellow party members as they grew more conservative and the liberal voters on the East Side of Manhattan who kept re-electing him until 1992. In a letter to him in 1983, President Ronald Reagan thanked him for his support when "you could give it." Mr. Green's political success was directly related to his ability to get money for New York, particularly for housing programs. In 1983, The New York Times quoted Mr. Green as saying that he was "aggressive on behalf of the city in getting dough." He was also a meticulous student of issues, poring over The Federal Register, which gives the minutiae of regulations. In 1992, The Almanac of American Politics suggested that Republicans tolerated his support of civil rights for gays and other liberal causes because "they understand that this is the only kind of Republican who could hold this district." Mr. Green represented the Upper East Side district once known as the Silk Stocking District, and his political fortunes reflected its changing district lines. Over the years, it was gradually redrawn to take in more poor and middle-class neighborhoods. In 1992, heavily Democratic swaths of Queens and Brooklyn were added late in the campaign, contributing to his loss to Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democratic city councilwoman. An earlier, geographically smaller district had elected John V. Lindsay, a Republican, to the first of four terms in 1958; he went on to become mayor. In 1968, Edward I. Koch, another future mayor, claimed it for the Democrats. Mr. Green won a special election in 1978 to fill the seat left vacant when Mr. Koch became mayor. Mr. Green ran on his liberal voting record as a state assemblyman and as a strong proponent of social positions favored by liberals. He defeated Bella S. Abzug, a former representative who was running as a candidate of the Democratic and Liberal Parties, 51 to 49 percent, outspending her more than two to one. An heir to the Grand Union supermarket fortune, Mr. Green continued to spend lavishly on his campaigns even as he argued for stricter limits on campaign spending. In what was one of the most expensive Congressional campaigns at the time, he defeated Carter Burden, a Democratic former city councilman and heir to the Vanderbilt and Whitney fortunes, in the general election of 1978 to retain his newly won seat. In an interview with The New York Post, Mr. Green was quoted as calling the high spending by both sides appalling; Mr. Burden called it "ridiculously astronomic." Sedgwick William Green was born in Manhattan on Oct. 16, 1929. He graduated from Horace Mann School, Harvard and Harvard Law School, where he edited the law review. After Army service in the Judge Advocate General's Corps and a stint as a law clerk to a federal judge, he went into private practice, dealing mostly with securities and corporate law. Then he was a lawyer for the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing and Urban Development. He won a seat in the State Assembly in 1965, beating his Democratic-Liberal opponent two to one in a predominantly Democratic district. In 1968, he ran for Congress, but lost the Republican nomination to Whitney North Seymour Jr., who in turn lost to Mr. Koch. In 1970, he was appointed regional administrator of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, serving until 1977, when the Carter administration took office. After his defeat in 1992, Mr. Green served on many corporate and philanthropic boards and on the City Campaign Finance Board. He sought his party's nomination for governor in 1994, but dropped out after finishing last in four-way balloting at the Republican State Convention. In addition to his daughter Catherine, of Washington, he is survived by his wife, the former Patricia Freiberg; his son Louis, of San Francisco, and his sister Cynthia Green Colin of Manhattan. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]