Bill Press · 2023 Honoree

When Bill Press moved to Washington from California in 1996 to take a job as one of the hosts of CNN’s nightly debate program Crossfire, he and his wife Carol got lots of advice about where they should live. Kalorama, McLean, and Potomac were suggested as desirable neighborhoods. Fortunately, they also had friends on the Hill and once they had visited here they knew where they wanted to be. They still travel back to California to visit their children and grandchildren but Capitol Hill is now definitely home. 

From his long career in both California and national Democratic party politics, and his years as a political commentator, Bill brought with him a Rolodex impressive even by Washington standards. When the Hill Center opened Bill quickly came up with the idea for a series of conversations there between him and various public personalities, conducted before a live audience and offering the opportunity for give and take between interviewees and the public. “Talk of the Hill” made its debut in 2012 with a conversation between Bill and Brian Lamb, founder of C-SPAN, the cable network created to cover Congress, with a hundred members of the public in attendance. Since then, Bill has hosted over sixty talks with political figures, Supreme Court justices, fellow writers and journalists, and celebrity chefs. Always, he says, his goal has been not just to offer people on Capitol Hill the opportunity to hear from public figures but the chance, as well, to let his interviewees know that this community is warm and welcoming, filled with residents well-informed and eager to learn more.

Bill now hosts two podcasts a week and is a regular columnist for The Hill and the Chicago Tribune syndicate. He is also the author of nine books. The most recent, From the Left, tells not just of his role on Crossfire and in other media outlets but of the route that brought him to where he is today. Just out of high school in Delaware, he embarked on what turned out to be a ten-year detour through seminary. This brought him valuable experience teaching high school and a degree in theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, landing him in San Francisco in 1967. There he volunteered to work on Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for president, met Carol, and realized that his contributions would be made not through the church but in the secular world.