by Randy Shilts
“Jesus Christ, Harvey, you’ve got to be kidding. You were just sworn in last week.”
Every friend and advisor told Harvey the same thing: Don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it. Jim Rivaldo told him it would be a big mistake. Frank Robinson said it would make Harvey look opportunistic. Scott Smith dreaded the idea of launching another campaign when the last race was still only two months behind them.
But Harvey had Jim Rivaldo’s neatly color-coded maps of the 1975 supervisorial race and the evidence was incontrovertible. It would have been impossible to find a better legislative district for Harvey than the 16th Assembly District. With Assemblyman John Foran leaving the seat behind to take over George Moscone’s state senate seat, Harvey was lured by the tantalizing possibility of being a California assemblyman. Just two months before, Harvey had garnered 17,000 votes in the 16th A.D.; Foran had won the seat in 1974 with only 16,500 votes. The seat was his for the taking, he figured.
There were other reasons even his closest confidantes did not know, reasons he cited only to Scott in the long talks about politics and strategy they had in bed until the early morning hours. An old diving injury from the Navy was acting up. Pain had frequently wracked his shoulders during the hectic handshaking of the last campaign. His endurance might not hold out until the 1977 supervisorial elections. And in a few months, he would be forty-six, that much closer to his deadline.
Politicos floated rumors that Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy’s top lieutenant, Art Agnos, might go after the seat, but that was of little concern to Milk. His supervisorial campaign had given him extremely high name recognition. He could easily roll over Art Somebody, leap frog the small-time arena of municipal politics and forge a highly visible role as California’s first openly gay legislator. Harvey’s agenda called for getting the public platform that comes with public office; it didn’t matter which public office he had. The race would be a cakewalk; it seemed too good to be true. And it was.
* * *
The deal—probably just a few comments dropped over lunch. The right inflection when Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy talked about whether he’d ever want to run for Congress. The pregnant pause after Senate Majority Leader George Moscone wondered aloud if another liberal would oppose him for the mayoralty. People who know don’t talk about such things publicly; that’s why they are the people who know. By the closing days of 1974, however, over a year and a half before the 1976 assembly race, the deal deciding that election was struck.
The agreement had all the trappings of a medieval marriage between two warring dynasties. On one hand was the McCarthy clan, the more conservative of the two Democratic power structures in San Francisco. McCarthy first won public office in 1963 when he and George Moscone were elected freshman supervisors. McCarthy had since worked up to the speakership of the California assembly, a position of power second only to that of the governor himself. In 1974, he helped his old law partner, John Foran, win the seat in the neighboring 16th A.D.
On the other side was the more liberal Burton-Moscone axis, a group which had been estranged from McCarthy since the bruising primary battle between Moscone and McCarthy for Moscone’s first senate term in 1966. Moscone had done well for himself, becoming senate majority leader in a year. His ally, Congressman Phil Burton, meanwhile, was in 1974 working on his plan to become majority leader of the United States House of Representatives, the second most powerful post in that body. Toward securing his power base, Phil Burton helped his younger brother John rise from the state assembly to become San Francisco’s other congressman. Still another Burton brother presided over the community college board. Closely allied with this axis was Assemblyman Willie Brown, the dapper black politician who was Moscone’s closest political friend—and a McCarthy enemy after he emerged as McCarthy’s chief opponent in the battle for assembly speaker.
By late 1974, both factions needed to patch things up. Earlier that year, Moscone’s attempt to run for governor had fizzled. He decided to run for mayor, but McCarthy could destroy his chances by running his own moderate Democrat. Phil Burton wanted to shore up his congressional backyard as he pushed for House majority leader. His likeliest Democratic opposition would come from the McCarthy camp. Ever since his attempt to be Speaker, Willie Brown had been pushed in the assembly basement by the vengeful victor so he needed a committee chairmanship to regain his clout. Brown, after all, made a good chunk of money as a lawyer for special interests who needed legislative connections. The more powerful he was, the more money he made.
The McCarthy forces had much to gain from a rapprochement as well. A Moscone move to City Hall would open up a senate seat which, if under proper control, could increase McCarthy’s already considerable power. McCarthy still worried that Willie Brown might make another try for the speakership. And there was one more matter. If, say, Assemblyman John Foran moved into Moscone’s senate seat, he would leave behind an assembly seat. McCarthy wanted that too, filled by his top aide, Art Agnos.
There was talk that it was all decided over a luncheon meeting between Phil Burton, McCarthy, and Moscone, but that was only talk. What was certain was that the deal was struck with something in it for everybody. Moscone got to be mayor. Willie Brown moved up from the basement to be chair of the Assembly Revenue and Tax Committee. Phil and John Burton did not have to worry about being challenged in congressional primaries by a McCarthy candidate. McCarthy, meanwhile, got his closest aide made into an assemblyman, while his former law partner became a state senator and he had no more fears about being again challenged by Willie Brown. Just about every politico and government reporter in town figured the machinations out—everybody, that is, except Harvey Milk.
* * *
Art Agnos put together a list of key community leaders in the district he needed to contact before formally announcing his candidacy. He had never heard of Harvey Milk before culling the names, but he politely stopped by Castro Camera to try to wrap up an endorsement just the same. Harvey showed Agnos his neatly color-coded map, mentioned he felt he might have a chance in the district, but that he probably would not run, even though he had not made his final decision yet. The way Agnos later told the story, Agnos was probably not as far as the corner of Castro Street before Harvey was on the phone.
“Well, Leo, your boy Art Agnos was just here.”
Leo McCarthy was not amused. He knew Agnos was making the rounds, so he probably had stopped to see this Harvey What’s-His-Name, but the speaker did not like to have Agnos referred to his “his boy” and he didn’t like the tenor of Milk’s conversation. Jim Foster and David Goodstein certainly treated him with proper respect. What was the matter with this Milk guy?
“Tell you what,” Milk said. “I’ll stay out of the race if you get Burton to back me for supervisor next year.”
The speaker turned down Milk’s offer and hung up as soon as possible. The story quickly spread through political circles. The respectable gay leaders solemnly assured politicians that this was indeed what they had come to expect from Harvey Milk. Agnos and McCarthy considered the call crude. That’s not how political deals are struck, Agnos thought. You never come out and say it. It was as if Milk thought that Moscone, McCarthy, and Representative Burton had sat down with a big map and indelicately carved up the power. Deal-making, of course, required the art of leaving little pauses, darting meaningful glances, and dropping hypothetical questions that aren’t really questions at all. As far as Agnos was concerned, he just happened to be at the right place when all the pieces happened to, well, fall together. “It was serendipity,” he later said.
Agnos felt he had far more expertise than Milk to represent so diverse a district. He had labored for years as a social worker in Chinatown, the black Hunter’s Point area and the Latino Mission district. He knew more about these neighborhoods than this camera store owner who hadn’t set his sights much further than Castro Street. He’d also spent years at the right hand of the assembly’s most powerful member. It was patently obvious that h
e would be the most effective assemblyman, he thought. Milk’s lack of diplomacy in calling McCarthy further proved that he’d never make it in the assembly.
* * *
“Who’s Art Agnos?”
Harvey kept repeating the question rhetorically to any reporter who would listen as he spent February launching trial balloons, hinting coyly that he might run if no other viable candidate stood forth to challenge this guy nobody had ever heard of. The Democratic establishment was aghast. Milk had been paid off with his commissionership. What more did he want? He could even be supervisor in 1977, maybe. All he had to do was wait. Mayor Moscone issued a statement saying he would fire Harvey from the Board of Permit Appeals the moment he filed papers to run.
Harvey started calling activists to see how much support he could expect if he ran. He quickly discovered that even if John Q. Public did not know Agnos’ name, three key politicians did: Moscone, the city’s most powerful man; Leo McCarthy, the state’s second most powerful leader; and Phil Burton, who was working on being Congress’ second most powerful figure. Virtually every politico of any importance—from the lowliest sanitation commissioner to the governor—was beholden to one of these men. They had all been lined up long ago to support Agnos—months before the general public even knew the seat would be open. Jim Foster, Rick Stokes, and David Goodstein had long ago committed themselves to Agnos. Their payoff was repeal of the sodomy statute. That everything had been sewn up so long in advance offended Milk’s basic belief that politics was a matter of one-on-one, meet-the-people handshakes. He became more convinced he should run.
* * *
Harvey Milk vs. The Machine.
The bold headline in the liberal weekly newspaper titillated Harvey right down to his publicist’s soul. He had only let out a few hints that he might, just maybe, consider running. The press was having a field day. The specter of machine politics surrounding Agnos’ candidacy horrified Michael Wong’s populist sensibilities and he called Harvey to see if Milk would champion the anti-machine cause.
“Like the way the media is covering all this?” Harvey asked.
“Resign,” Wong insisted. “Show that you will not be a pawn.”
“No, no, no,” Harvey said. “I would get more out of being fired than if I resigned. No, Mike, I’m gonna let him fire me. Then people will be outraged.”
Milk’s five weeks stewardship on the Board of Permit Appeals saw him gleefully playing cat and mouse with the Democratic establishment to the delight of the media and the horror of supporters who thought Harvey was crazy to buck every politician in town. The newspapers, however, had never had much use for people like Moscone and Burton, so they goaded Milk on. The Examiner editorialized that Moscone’s threat to fire Milk represented “Chicago-style politics” and took to calling the mayor “Boss Moscone.” When the mayor insisted he wanted commissioners who would devote their efforts to commissions, not campaigning, another newspaper wrote that Moscone “ought to build a stadium for us to laugh in.” Holding public office had not stopped Moscone from campaigning for both governor and mayor. It didn’t help Moscone’s case when he insisted that he had to support Agnos for the assembly seat because he had promised to do so a year and a half earlier—a defense that only raised more questions about the deal. Stories also revealed that John Foran had only moved into Moscone’s old senate district the weekend before the filing deadline. The secretary of state, a Democrat with ambitions of her own, certified Foran’s eligibility for candidacy, but the entire chicanery provided more fuel for the columnists’ charges that the political musical chairs was bossism at its worst.
All this press and Harvey hadn’t even announced he was going to run. With the battlelines so clearly drawn, however, the temptation provided irresistible, “I think representatives should be elected by the people—not appointed,” Milk said in his announcement speech at the San Francisco Press Club. “I think a representative should earn his or her seat. I don’t think the seat should be awarded on the basis of service to the machine. Machines operate on oil and grease; they’re dirty, dehumanizing, and too often unresponsive to any needs but those of the operator.”
Within hours of Milk’s statement, Mayor Moscone had an announcement of his own. Harvey was off the Board of Permit Appeals; Rick Stokes took his place. He also appointed two more members of the old guard, veterans Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, to the Human Rights Commission and Commission on the Status of Women.
Harvey’s campaign slogan soon appeared on buttons and posters all around San Francisco: Harvey Milk vs. The Machine.
* * *
Politicians have an aversion to deodorant, thought John Ryckman when he met Harvey Milk. And this one’s no exception.
One of the adoring little old ladies who were always whispering advice in Harvey’s ear insisted that Ryckman would be the perfect campaign manager. Ryckman had decades of experience in Democratic Party politics. He’d been in his nice stable relationship for years. Besides, he knew all the rich Pacific Heights people who had lots of money to spread around the campaign. Ryckman never doubted that all this made him the perfect campaign manager for Milk; the question was whether Milk was the candidate for him.
Ryckman instantly felt uneasy about the hyperactive politician at their first meeting. Instead of boyishness, Ryckman saw something of a spoiled child, demanding nearly superhuman efforts from his employees, friends, and campaign workers. He ran off at the mouth with long trains of hyperbole. His temper flared easily—especially at his lover Scott—and he seemed inordinately preoccupied with minutiae, using only bottled distilled water for his ritual morning cup of coffee which, of course, had to be of an exotic blend mixed especially for his tastes.
The candidate seemed totally disorganized. His supporter roster consisted of a boxful of matchbook covers, bar napkins, and scraps of paper. Milk’s business was in a shambles, no small consideration for a manager who had only handled campaigns with money. Harvey’s ragtag corps of volunteers from Castro Street showed few signs of affluence. I’d have to be crazy to get involved with this campaign, Ryckman thought.
But Ryckman had liked lost causes ever since he had been a volunteer in Young Californians for Stevenson in 1952. The fact that the alleged new breed of San Francisco liberals would do something like sew up an election over a year in advance irritated his old-fashioned Democratic spine. And in the back of his mind, he could never forget the pained look on his lover’s face when he talked about the awful hours of interrogation and trial during the proceedings that had resulted in a dishonorable discharge from the Navy. Steve never became the man he could have been because of that disgrace. Maybe if this uncouth, pushy New York Jew could do something to take a swipe at it all, well, maybe, it might be worth a few months. That’s how Harvey Milk got his first professional campaign manager.
Ryckman knew he had made the right decision a few days later when a half-giggling store employee told him a new campaign volunteer had arrived at the Castro Camera headquarters. At the counter stood a pert young girl in her Most Holy Redeemer uniform, a wool hat, and school bag. Ryckman thought she might be a midget, but no, she was a sixth grader who had carefully printed out the volunteer card:
Name: Medora Payne
Age: 11
Occupation: School kid
What like to do: precinct work, fund raising
Medora’s appearance marked the only time Ryckman ever called a prospective volunteer’s parents to get permission. “She just loves Harvey,” Mrs. Payne explained. “She’s been wanting to get involved in his campaigns for so long, we couldn’t keep her away if we wanted to.” The precocious young Medora became a fixture at the camera store, bringing in her best girl friend from Most Holy Redeemer and bossing around any volunteers who might be indolent enough to lay back when there was so much work to be done.
* * *
Michael Wong was horrified when he came to Castro Camera to see how the spacious area behind the camera supplies should be organized into a campai
gn headquarters. Paint spilled from the ‘75 campaign’s handmade posters stained most of the floor. Campaign signs, old brochures, and a thick coating of dust covered every square foot.
“Harvey is this how you people live—in pig pens?” Wong demanded.
“No, my little yellow lotus blossom,” Harvey grinned back. “We were waiting for our houseboy to arrive. There’s the broom.”
The opening weeks of the campaign dissolved Ryckman’s early misgivings about the peripatetic Milk. If Harvey shouted too loudly at Scott and his closest friends, he could also purr softly into the ear of any reporter who happened by—and usually come out of it with some good press. Milk demanded too much of those around him, but his demands of others paled in comparison to what he demanded of himself. Every morning at five-thirty, Milk rose to pump hands at bus stops, hit the coffee shops, attend an afternoon political luncheon, hit more bus stops, lecture at early evening candidates’ nights, take in at least one bingo game and return to the headquarters at midnight to help volunteers lick stamps and seal envelopes. Harvey could bring a new twist to each day’s campaiging. The arrival of the film All the President’s Men inspired Milk to work the long lines of moviegoers each night, talking auspiciously of the dangers of too much power concentrated in too few hands. What intrigued Ryckman most about his new candidate, however, were the endless lines of Irish widows, stodgy merchants, and troubled teenagers who were always coming in to see Harvey and ask his help to solve this or that problem. Other candidates would have had flak-catchers screen out such nuisances since they were hardly the people with whom campaigns were won or lost, but Harvey always had time, sometimes putting important politicians and campaign donors on hold while he reassured a worried mother that he’d work on getting a stoplight installed near the neighborhood grade school. That, to Harvey Milk, was what politics was all about.