William J. Green III

At 85 years old, William J. Green III physical status not available right now. We will update William J. Green III's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

At the age of 25, Green was elected as a Democrat in a special election on April 28, 1964, to the Eighty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father. He was reelected to six successive Congresses and served until January 3, 1977.

Upon his election to Congress, Green and his wife Pat moved to Frankford. As a congressman in Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" era, Green assumed leadership on issues such as meat inspection, rat control, and tax reform and led 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 cosponsors of the Equal Rights Amendment. He had a 100 percent rating from the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and the Americans for Democratic Action for his fourteen years in Congress.

Green 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 his reform plan following a Republican sweep led by District Attorney and future U.S. Senator Arlen Specter.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia in 1971, losing to former Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo's "law and order" candidacy. In the 1972 congressional redistricting, Green's opponents tried to gerrymander him out of his seat, placing him in the same district as Congressman James Byrne, in office since 1952. 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. The grassroots organization Green put together for his mayoral campaign, however, enabled him to defeat Byrne decisively. He was then easily re-elected in the overwhelmingly Democratic year of 1974.

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.

In the late 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s, Green pursued a successful career as vice president of government relations for MacAndrews & Forbes, a large holding company that includes Revlon.

In 2003, Green retired from MacAndrews & Forbes and returned with his wife to Philadelphia, where he has since kept a low political profile. 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.

Source