Q&A: Mayor Green Gears Up for State Assembly Campaign

As Union City Mayor Mark Green’s 19-year tenure as mayor comes to an end this year, he’s hoping to take his experience and make changes at a larger level.

Green, 58, recently announced his bid for the California State Assembly’s , which includes Union City, Ashland, Castro Valley, Fairview, Hayward, San Lorenzo and parts of Fremont and Sunol.

With the kick-off of his campaign, Green will hold a press conference today at 10 a.m. at in Union City, followed by a series of events throughout the month.

Green, who’s running as an independent after nearly 20 years as a Democrat, will be pitted against Bill Quirk, a 66-year-old Hayward councilman; Jennifer Ong, a 42-year-old optometrist who works in Alameda and lives in Hayward; and Sarabjit Cheema, a 52-year-old New Haven Unified School District board member — all of whom are Democrats. Also running is Adnan Shahab, a 33-year-old Fremont Republican who previously ran for the Assembly seat in 2010 but lost to Bob Wieckowski.

Born in Peoria, Ill., Green graduated from UC Berkeley in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. A father of two, he’s lived in Union City for more than 35 years and ran an insurance business for 21 years. He currently works as a substitute teacher in the Hayward Unified School District.

In May, Green will celebrate 26 years of civic involvement in Union City, which began in 1986 as a committee member on Union City’s planning and parks and recreation commissions. He went on to become a City Council member in 1991 and was elected mayor in 1993. While serving as mayor of Union City, he’s also held seats on various regional government agencies, including president of the Association of Bay Area Governments, a position he currently holds.

Now, after five re-elections as mayor, Green will be termed out in December. And he’s determined to bring his no-nonsense brand of politics to State Assembly.

“If you look at just the sheer knowledge that I’ve accumulated over the years, it vastly outweighs the entire regional experience of all of my opponents combined,” said Green in an interview with Union City Patch.

We sat down with Green to talk about his priorities for the Assembly seat, his history, Union City’s upcoming mayoral election and more.

On his start in politics:

I really got started by watching the commission and Council meetings on cable TV … You’re trolling through the channels and you come to the realization that A) these people are making decisions that are affecting me and B) some of those decisions aren’t that great. At some point, you have to get involved if you really want to affect change in the direction you want it to go.

On his achievements as mayor of Union City: 

Increasing resources to public safety has to be near the top of the list. We were able to pass two parcel taxes in 2004 and 2008, and . All of those measures have allowed us to avoid some of the severe cutbacks that many other cities have had to experience and has allowed us to keep police services and fire services at a higher level than many communities…

Since I’ve become mayor, we’ve added a senior center and the sports center, which many people think is the best thing to happen to Union City. We’ve added three artificial turf fields. We’ve added many parks to our new developments so that younger children have access to parks near their homes…

I think we’ve done a tremendous service as a agency in that we truly removed some blighted areas around town, in Decoto, in Old Alvarado. The Pacific States Steel and former PG&E sites have been revamped, revitalized and redeveloped. In that same vein, our affordable housing production has been stellar in that we’ve been using redevelopment dollars for affordable housing.

On working with City Council over the years:

The first decade of this century, I think we had a solid working relationship amongst the City Council as well as the city staff. I think that was an excellent decade for us. The 90s were more tumultuous, but we had a lot of great things happen…

The most stable five members of Council in the history of Union City was when I was mayor. From 1997 to 2004, all five members were the same. Then from 2004 to 2010, all five members the same. The only switch we had was Ben Elias to Jim Navarro in 2004.

The year of change, we’re undergoing it.

On the 2012 Union City mayoral race:

Richard Valle and Carol Dutra-Vernaci — those are the two candidates who have announced their bids. I think any other candidate to run against those two would be suicidal. One of those two will win.

On transitioning to State Assembly:

I think I’ve shown the ability to work well with colleagues in my own county and throughout the Bay Area region. That trait is going to be necessary to be effective and efficient in Sacramento. You have these polarizations — you have Democrats over there and Republicans over there; I’m an independent. I think the ability that I’ve had to work with different people in the region and the county will help me out there because I’ll be able to work on both sides of the aisle.

Frankly, I think I’ll be working with other independents. I think the cadre of independents will be growing. You’ll see a lot more making it into Sacramento … The continuation of partisan policy politics for the state of California is ridiculous. It’s been more like a partisan plague.

On his priorities:

I don’t think I’m going to be wasting a lot of time on peripheral bills. I think the major issues facing the state really come down to a few items. One is obviously employment.

We need to get more people working for multiple reasons. The people out of work want to improve their lives and we need to make that happen. Secondly, the coffers of all government will benefit from more people working. More people working means more income tax revenue. More sales tax revenue will be coming in; property tax revenue will almost certainly go up also because more construction will be taking place. Government, as well as individuals, are all benefitting from an economy that is stronger…

We need an educated workforce. We need to be have the business community work with educators in developing curriculum, especially at the high school and community college levels, to have more flexibility and variation of what’s being offered to students so that students will be able to jump into a job that is available and has meaning and is beneficial to them as an individual and to us as a society. It isn’t to say that the classical stream of education is going to disappear, but there needs to be a modification to it so that not everybody is going to go down this channel where it’s, “Oh, you’re out of high school, now you’re going to Cal.” There needs to be something in the middle…

We need to improve transportation. We need to get BART down into San Jose. We need to make it much more convenient to make it for people to utilize mass transit, especially for people making longer trips, like Union City to Redwood City. Eventually, I hope we can get from Livermore to San Jose on BART…

We need to find a way to redevelopment back on the books and still use that as a channel to get affordable housing as well as remove blight. … If further restrictions need to be in place, I can buy that, but to kill it, that was nuts. It was a construction-killing piece of legislation.

Green will hold a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 19 at 10 a.m. in the San Rafael Boardroom at Crowne Plaza Hotel (32083 Alvarado-Niles Rd. in Union City).

For more information on Green, visit his website.