Ramsey Clark, a Democrat and former Attorney General of the United States in the Johnson administration, ran as an anti-war candidate and reinforced his opposition to the influence of money in electoral politics by imposing a per person limit of $100 on contributions to his campaign.
Together with the help of a group of limited partners that included E. L. Doctorow, Norman Lear, Alan Sagner, and Dorothy Schiff, Fish and Navasky began a decade-long partnership as publisher and editor of the country's oldest political weekly.
During their stewardship, The Nation experienced steady growth, modernized its publishing operation, prospered in many respects during the Ronald Reagan years, and caused a measure of mayhem worthy of an independent political journal.
With the help of the Lear Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation, Fish created an investigative journalism division, directed by Esther Kaplan and Joe Conason, to fund and oversee long-form investigative projects; with Tom Engelhardt he developed tomdispatch.com [1], an important source of progressive commentary on the web; with Randy Fertel he developed the Ridenhour Prizes, which annually recognize whistleblowers, investigative reporters, and others who persevere in courageous acts of truth-telling; and with Victor Navasky he helped found Nation Books, which under Editor Carl Bromley and in association first with Avalon and then Perseus Books, grew into a leading independent non-fiction imprint.
During these years, Fish also worked as a political advisor to George Soros, and with Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte he helped to develop a lobbying effort on behalf of U.S. support for the International Criminal Court, an initiative that President Bill Clinton endorsed on the last day of December 2000.
After leaving The Nation magazine in 1987, Fish entered a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for the United States Congress in a Westchester County district held by Republican Representative Joseph DioGuardi.
Fish won the Democratic primary, and although his father crossed party lines to endorse his son, he lost in the general election to Republican Sue Kelly.
McCormack said he had asked Fish to "remain on a leave of absence", effective immediately after "having been made aware that a number of employees have come forward in the last few days to express concern about certain workplace interactions that have created an uncomfortable environment for them."
On October 30, 2017, the Huffington Post published allegations that, in front of several witnesses, Fish had choked a senior staff member at The Nation Institute hard enough to leave red marks on her throat.
[8][9] In a New York Times article from November 3, 2017, Fish was cited as writing in response, "As I understand it, some employees, to my deep dismay, complained this week that my presence had led them to feel uncomfortable at The New Republic."
With the backing of California financier Max Palevsky and the support of Paramount Pictures, Fish embarked on a two-year odyssey to complete The Memory of Justice and to arrange its distribution.
[14] With John Friedman and Eric Nadler, Fish produced Stealing the Fire,[15] the 2002 documentary that traced the development of uranium atom separation from the failed experiments in the World War II labs of Nazi Germany through the successful invention of the centrifuge in the Black Sea labs of the former Soviet Union, to the eventual patent infringement of the separation technology and its transfer to Pakistani and Iraqi agents.
Fish served as a producer of Food Chains, the 2014 documentary by Sanjay Rawal about farm labor that focused in particular on the gains achieved by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the worker-based human rights organization representing tomato pickers in Florida.
In 1989, Fish moved with his partner Sandra Harper to Hudson, New York, and started an organic truck farm, where they grew heirloom produce and culinary and decorative herbs.
During this period, Fish was most prominently associated with the launch of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the opening of HRW's European office in Brussels, Belgium.