Mark Plotkin
Washington’s commentator with a cause

Plotkin enjoying being roasted, McGinty projected in background.

Originally published in Current, March 12, 2001
By Jacqueline Conciatore

"Mark Plotkin has perfected the art of pissing people off." So said former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry during a roast of the WAMU-FM political pundit last summer, an event that attracted more than 600 guests who howled with appreciation.

Actually, the statement isn’t totally accurate. Some people Mark Plotkin merely annoys.

"He’s the Howard Cosell of District journalism," Plotkin’s radio colleague Kojo Nnamdi once said.

"Plotkin is a pest," said D.C. congressional representative Eleanor Holmes Norton during the June roast. "He is, however, our pest."

What is it about the political journalist that draws such (generally) affectionate insults? Try a blunt interviewing style, a penchant for interrupting, and a tendency to pontificate, to start. Add a relentless commitment to pointing out the elephant in the room: the capital city’s lack of statehood and of voting representation in Congress.

"I compare him to a bowling ball. It’s clear what he’s doing—he’s heading for his target," says WRC-TV reporter Tom Sherwood. "Some people don’t like his Chicago-style aggressiveness, so sometimes in this Southern city he can be seen as too pushy. But Mark is pushy about things he strongly believes in—open government, good government, voting rights for the District."

That pushiness paid off late last year, when the radio commentator was instrumental in saving D.C.’s city hall, a coup that caused officials to joke that Plotkin should get an office in the building after it reopened. Months later, Plotkin’s questions during a White House press conference led to staff members mounting D.C.’s new protest license plates ("Taxation Without Representation") on a presidential limousine.

Given Plotkin’s tendency to brag, these successes no doubt caused some people to shake their heads and say, "We’ll never hear the end of it." But listeners delight in following this energetic, essentially likeable and very un-Washington character. For WAMU, which carries the weekly D.C. Politics Hour with Mark Plotkin, these newsmaking events give reflected credit on top of the show’s solid performance and insider cachet.

"I would never have imagined this public radio station could have an impact in the city as large as [commercial outlets] WMAL or WTOP," said former WAMU Program Director Steve Martin.

Three of the city's four past mayors join Plotkin (left) for WAMU's D.C. Politics Hour. Center to right: Walter Washington, Sharon Pratt Kelley and present Mayor Anthony Williams.

The Friday noontime discussion between Nnamdi, Plotkin and guest reporters such as Sherwood attracts 32,600 listeners on average each week, according to the most recent ratings. But it’s who listens that matters most: elected officials frequently call in to defend themselves, expound on a topic or plug various initiatives. Officials have joked that the city’s work halts during the program.

The show is important to politicos especially because in Washington there’s not much competition in vigorous coverage of city affairs. "The Washington Post has been so focused on being a national paper that it doesn’t pay close attention," says Martin.

A Barry interesting time

Plotkin started doing political commentaries for WAMU in 1982, after he lost a run for D.C. Council. (Several suburban commentators also have appeared regularly, notably Lanny Davis before he became White House counsel.) The station brought him on full-time for the D.C. Politics Hour in 1990 at the same time it decided to focus more on local affairs. The city was making hot national news. Mayor Barry had been arrested for smoking crack, and there was talk of Jesse Jackson running to succeed him. Plotkin had the interest in city politics and Chicago roots. "I said to Kim, ‘Clearly politics in this city are getting interesting. Let’s put Mark on for the election,’" says Martin.

Those early shows, when Plotkin and weekday talk host Derek McGinty developed a sparring and sometimes edgy on-air relationship, garnered the most listener reaction, says Sherwood. "During the horrible times when Marion Barry was the mayor and in trouble, the vitriol and feelings about what he was doing were pretty strong." Though D.C. Politics Hour had been a forum for outspoken criticism of the charismatic mayor, he was able to use the show to launch his comeback after getting out of jail, Plotkin says. After his re-election, the "mayor-for-life" angered the city’s already-alienated white voters when he said those disgruntled by his post-incarceration victory should just "get over it."

Plotkin himself has little patience for those who would miss the ups and downs of the Barry administration and the strength of the former mayor’s personality. "To say that [Barry] was good material is the understatement of the millennium," Plotkin says. "But to use his immortal words, we have to get over it. . . . D.C. has interest and significance that is beyond Marion Barry."

One of Plotkin’s appeals is that he channels D.C. politics as good theater. This is natural for someone raised on Chicago politics—he claims his first memory is of a day standing next to a voting precinct captain at the polls. But he does take pains to use his reporting to set a scene for listeners. "I think that’s what people enjoy," he says, adding, "The person I never want to be is George Will"—abstract and removed from the action. "He doesn’t seem to be having a good time of it."

Like the Car Talk guys, Plotkin is an unusual animal for public radio. "A lot [of people] said it was nuts [to bring him on]," says Martin. "He doesn’t complete his sentences. He doesn’t sound good. But what he had was a passion, the basic street politics knowledge, the Chicago kind of orientation, and he had the approach to politics being a spectator sport."

Persistence and more

The June 2000 roast of Plotkin in the dim and elegant ballroom of the tony Mayflower Hotel was clear evidence Plotkin has become a central part of D.C. political life. Six-hundred people turned out, grossing $133,000 for WAMU. Attendees were impressed by the parade of politicians who stepped up to the microphone to insult Plotkin—all of the mayors from the city’s short life of limited home rule, plus City Council members and suburban members of Congress.

Many of the evening’s jokes centered around Plotkin’s habit of interrupting others in his zeal to make a point. Ground rules prohibited him from speaking except at the program’s very end. The present mayor, Anthony Williams, quipped: "This man can ask you a question, interrupt, rephrase the question and answer you, and then disagree—all in less than 60 seconds!" The mayor’s presentation included a video in which he has time to leave a press conference, take a leisurely shopping trip, and return to the podium before Plotkin has finished asking one question. This long-windedness is indeed characteristic, but also purposeful, says Sherwood. "His questions often have all these subordinate phrases because he tries to close off any avenue of escape. He’ll say, ‘Tell me what your name is, and I don’t want to know what your name was before you married, I want to know what it is now.’ "

Plotkin also took some ribbing for his persistence on the issue of D.C.’s Wilson Building, or city hall. As the new millennium approached, D.C. was about to turn over its shabby Beaux Arts building to new tenants—the federal government. The building on Pennsylvania Avenue had fallen into such disrepair over the years that by 1995 the last remaining tenants—the D.C. Council—had to give up, due to the pigeons and a bad odor of indeterminate cause. The city cut a deal whereby the federal government would pay for renovations and occupy two-thirds of the building; D.C. government would occupy the remainder. This was not the optimum symbol for a city that has often struggled against the yoke of federal control.

The city hall situation drove Plotkin crazy. He spoke about it on the air relentlessly. "Here we don’t have voting rights, and this is the only thing we have. We have this beautiful building on the Main Street of America," he says. "And we’re going to give it up. Or we’re going to be tenants, of the building that we own!"

"Listeners were telling us to shut him up," says Martin. But Plotkin’s zealotry won the day over apathy when Council Member Jack Evans agreed to write President Clinton on behalf of the council, asking him to intervene on behalf of the city. Evans has joked that it was easier to approach the White House than take another call from the commentator. Plotkin says Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner herself called to tell him the agency would not be moving into the building, as it had been set to do in two weeks or so. Although listeners initially weren’t responsive to the issue, once the building was back in city hands, they took time to thank him. That was a first, says Plotkin.

The deal also won credit in a Washington Post editorial and coverage in the New York Times and D.C.’s alternative City Paper.

Months later, Plotkin scored another coup. During a press conference, he asked the White House press secretary if President Clinton was going use the city’s new license plates, which carry the slogan "Taxation Without Representation."

Surprisingly, the White House was responsive. The limo only carried the plates briefly, however, because President Bush—forced to show his hand—has removed them.

A do-er at heart

Plotkin has politics in his blood. He claims the first person he visited after moving to D.C. as a college student was his congressman. He remembers being appalled that D.C. residents didn’t have a vote in Congress and had only recently won the right to vote for President (thanks to the 23rd amendment in 1963).

After college, he taught briefly and then jumped into politics. He worked on the campaigns of Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. He later served as deputy finance director for Morris Udall and Ted Kennedy. Locally, he served on the D.C. Democratic State Committee, and chaired a neighborhood advisory commission for two years. Twice he ran for City Council and lost.

Now, as commentator/journalist, Plotkin is always in the thick of it, covering events and schmoozing. Although he doesn’t report news per se, he’s often out developing sources and angles at meetings, press conferences and other city events. He’s not in the office much, though sometimes he can be seen making calls from WAMU’s front foyer.

It can be tiring to be a lone voice, or one of a few, fighting against apathy or politicians’ needs to make practical compromises. Plotkin notices himself getting "more obsessed" over issues on the air. "I really have to watch that," he says, because part of the program’s appeal is its humor and banter. Someone once told him listening to D.C. Politics Hour was like overhearing a fun conversation in a bar, and he believes that quality is essential to its appeal.

But Plotkin will tell you he wants action, and he wants his commentary to lead to action. This is a man who, former D.C. mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly noted during the WAMU banquet, is "inspired more by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine than the likes of Walter Cronkite."

He tries to keep his persistence on the issues of voting rights and D.C. statehood from turning D.C. Politics Hour into a one-note show, he says. On the other hand, he says, "It is such a fundamental issue. It’s like breathing." Denying the tax-paying citizens of the district a vote in Congress is similar to "telling black people in the ’60s they can’t go into this hotel, or they can’t go into this restaurant. This is so central and integral to democracy, that it would be irresponsible not to mention it, in all its permutations."

President Bush should get ready.

Jacqueline Conciatore, who covered public radio for Current, 1993-99, is a writer for the World Vision international relief and development organization and the Jane Goodall Institute.

	.	To Current's home page
	.	Others profiled in March 2001 "Forces to Reckon with" section: Daniel Schorr, Ruth Seymour, Rob Gardner.
	.	Outside links on WAMU site: RealAudio files of past DC Politics Hour broadcasts; information on the next DC Politics Hour; Plotkin bio.

Web page posted March 28, 2001
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