Elder Statesman

He was a promising young lawyer when he quit to stat a business. It thrived. So he sold it, moved across the country, and became Los Angeles's most controversial talk radio host. When Larry Elder talks about opportunity, people listen.

Nick Gillespie & Steve Kurtz from the April 1996 issue

(Page 6 of 6)

Elder: People thought I was insane. I was doing extremely well at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. I was well liked at one of the best law firms in America--at the time it was the ninth biggest law firm in the country. I wanted to make more money and I wanted to make it faster. What bothered me about the law firm was that you're in lock step. You can be the baddest guy in town and next year you'll be a second-year associate. You can be the baddest second-year associate in town, and next year you'll be a third-year associate. I didn't like that. I thought I was more talented and should be accelerated much faster. That was an unacceptable attitude to have in that system. I wasn't upset about it, that's just the way it was.

I always wanted to be paid for doing what I'm doing now. I wanted to be paid for thinking, for writing, for making commentary, and I knew that was a rough, tough way to go and that there probably wasn't a lot of money in it initially. I wanted to put myself economically in a position where I would then spend the time to pursue that--that required money. I didn't have enough devotion to just chuck it all and write for small-time publications and try to get a career that way. I wanted to make money, put it away, get a house, get a car, have a stock portfolio. I left the firm after three years, then I started and operated a legal headhunting business for 15 years. After having it for about six or seven years I put the day-to-day operations in the hands of the number-two person and I began reading and writing. I auditioned for and got a television show on PBS, which I hosted for six years. I can't say I had a plan. I literally picked up the phone and talked my way into getting this audition on PBS and they hired me. They just happened to be looking for a cohost.

I also starting writing opinion pieces for newspapers. I would send them to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and they would get rejected. I'd send another one and it would get rejected and then one got published and then the next three or four got rejected and then one got published and pretty soon, I began to develop an informal group of newspapers that would run my stuff.

Reason: And you read. What were you reading?

Elder: People I always wanted to read and had never had the chance. I read Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek. I read Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Somerset Maugham, lots of things. I had never really read a lot of Ayn Rand. I read The Fountainhead. Brave New World. I just took off and read stuff I never had a chance to read. So I'm just cruising along, preparing for my weekly show on Fox, writing columns. I wrote a screenplay, I wrote a television series.

Then I began getting invited on radio shows as a guest because of some of the columns I had written, ones mostly to the effect that racism is not the problem in America--my pieces were usually pretty incendiary. A guy invited me on his show and tried to rake me over the coals and I kicked his butt. His programming director called me and asked me if I'd like to fill in for the guy when he went on vacation. I told him I'd think about it. I went home to my then-wife (I'm divorced) and I said, "They want me to do this radio thing for a week. She said, "What do you think?" I said, "I think of talk radio as facile, glib, superficial, and shallow." She said, "I think you'd be good at it."

So I sat in for this guy for one week and I had been reborn. It was just an incredibly exhilarating experience. I sat in a little room. It was gray and sort of dark and lights flipping, this microphone there and nobody else there. I asked the engineer, "I can say anything I want and get all the things off my chest that have pissed me off, right?" He said, "Yeah." So I let it rip. And I talked about many of the things you and I are talking about now. I made tapes and took out the best 20 minutes or so and squashed them together and sent them to the top talk stations in Washington and Los Angeles--the only two cities that I would consider moving to. I followed them up, nobody cared. I wasn't surprised. I didn't think that one went from four or five days guest hosting to prime time radio in D.C. or L.A. I wasn't surprised, or disappointed, or pissed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At the time--this is 1992--I also appeared on a local show called Morning Exchange as legal expert on employment matters. I came in one day and Dennis Prager, the TV and radio show host, was a guest and as they were undoing the mike I overheard someone say to Dennis, "When are you going back to Los Angeles?" I introduced myself to Dennis, told him I was from Los Angeles originally and what I was doing now. Dennis told me to send him my stuff and to get in touch with him the next time I would be in Los Angeles, that he'd put me on his show. When I got out there around Christmas, Dennis, true to his word, put me on. He told me I would be on for 15 minutes. I was on for two hours.

Then I was back in Cleveland and I wrote Dennis a very nice letter, carefully worded, and asked if he'd be so kind as to mention me to management. Dennis did and put me in touch with the program director, who never would return my calls. So December 1993 rolls around, and I was back in L.A. and he put me on the show again. Again for two hours. This time the president and general manager of the station heard me. I flew back to Cleveland and literally just as I walked into my office, [KABC Station Manager] George Green is on the phone. He said, "I heard you and you have the three things we look for in a talk show host: You take a position, you can defend that position intelligently, and have a sense of humor. The combination is awesome. Will you come back here and sit in for two nights for somebody?" So I got back on the plane to Los Angeles. Literally, I sat in for one night in the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. spot and the next morning George calls my parents' house where I'm staying and he offers me a job.

Reason: Thank you.