The Mayor of Castro Street

by Randy Shilts

  At the Orange County Airport, Harvey and Dick Pabich ran into John Briggs, his wife, and his State Police bodyguard. Briggs offered to drive the pair to the debate, but Harvey wanted to wait for a ride from his boyfriend, Bob Tuttle. The quintet decided to have a cup of coffee at the airport lounge and for a half-hour Briggs and Milk bantered back and forth about the campaign like two old World War II buddies reminiscing about their days in the trenches. Dick Pabich never forgot the friendly exchange. They were two seasoned politicians who had spent years breaking all the political rules, relying on sheer showmanship for their successes, and delighting in the give-and-take of politics. When Briggs left, Harvey giggled to Dick, “This really is a big joke to him.”

  At the debate, the pair viciously ripped into each other.

  Bob Tuttle was startled at the vehemence of the many Briggs supporters who came to jeer Milk. “That,” he said later, “was when I realized that Harvey was right—he was going to get shot some day.”

  * * *

  By the campaign’s closing days, pollsters called the race too close to call, though gays had clearly seized the momentum. It wasn’t so much that homosexuals were winning, but that John Briggs was losing. Another spokesperson could have pulled it off, but the public didn’t like the senator. In a last-ditch effort to grab the media spotlight, Briggs called the San Francisco Police Department on the afternoon of October 31 to say that in four hours he intended to show up at Polk Street. Halloween, of course, had been the city’s high homosexual holiday since the times of Jose’s Black Cat. In recent years, crowds around the gay Polk Street neighborhood had grown so massive that police routinely closed off the street and let the drag queens have their annual field day. Some 80,000 revelers were partying on Polk Street when Senator Briggs arrived. A battery of media had also come to try to grab the expected shots of Briggs confronting drag queens. “I’m going because this is a children’s night and I’m interested in children,” he solemnly told reporters who asked why he was dropping in on that particular street on that particular night.

  The police car carrying Briggs, however, took him not to the Polk Street action but to a special delegation that had been arranged to greet the senator a few blocks away. Mayor Moscone, Police Chief Gain, Supervisors Milk and Silver all stepped forward to shake Briggs’s hand when the shocked legislator saw them. The mayor suggested it was not in the best interests of law and order for the senator to wander to Polk Street. The police chief, flanked by about twenty-five officers, agreed. The senator testily gave in and started his drive back to Sacramento.

  Just fifteen years ago that night, the police and city authorities had forced The Black Cat to close. The confrontation between Briggs and city authorities on Halloween 1978 was but another indication of how fully the tables had turned since that Halloween in 1963.

  * * *

  Election night. Harvey Milk was hopping mad.

  The pollsters had been wrong. The vote wasn’t even close. Around the state, voters were smashing Briggs’s ambitions by gigantic proportions. In San Francisco, the proposition was losing by a 75–25 percent margin; only one supervisorial district produced a majority for Prop 6—District 8, Dan White’s district. It looked like the measure would lose by over a million votes statewide and Harvey was pissed. All fall he had been looking forward to, at best, a narrow loss—and then some riots. People fought best with their backs to the wall, he thought, and he wanted his people to keep fighting. “You’ve heard of sore losers,” he complained to Cleve Jones. “Well, I’m a sore winner.”

  But the show had to go on. An empty hall off Castro Street had gone through a one-day refurbishing for the dozens of television cameras from all the networks that had assembled for the victory party that night. Mounted on the stage’s television-blue backdrop was a huge cutout of the Statue of Liberty, holding not a Bible but a large No-on-6 poster. The poster concealed a jockstrap that the artist had jokingly painted on Liberty. At 11 P.M., when Harvey figured the television newscasts would cut to the headquarters for live coverage, Milk gave the signal. From downstairs came the sound of a brass band, which marched into the hall blaring “San Francisco,” the perfect background music for the announcement of the results which showed a 2–1 victory for gays statewide. Harvey mounted the stage. “This is only the first step,” he told the roaring crowd. “The next step, the more important one, is for all those gays who did not come out, for whatever reasons, to do so now. To come out to all your family, to come out to all your relatives, to come out to all your friends—the coming out of a nation will smash the myths once and for all.”

  Mayor Moscone got a massive ovation when he made a surprise appearance at the rally. The election, he said, proved that “this country is really worth fighting for and the people over the years who have made so many sacrifices for this statute, for that principle did not fight in vain … that this country is a great country and anyone who in the future attempts to make political advances on the backs of those who it appears are at the bottom of the spectrum will be repudiated.… This is your night. No-on-6 will be emblazoned upon the principles of San Francisco, liberty and freedom for all, forever.”

  From Seattle came the news that gays had thwarted the attempt to repeal that city’s gay rights law, the first time gays had won a municipal gay rights referendum. After so many defeats, gays were finally winning. Police had to close off a block of Castro Street after the party, since celebrating gays had taken it over, dancing in the streets until 4 A.M.

  Late that night, Harvey called his friend Don Amador, who had been celebrating the victory at a party with an eighteen-year-old from Richmond, Minnesota, whom Harvey might remember. The disabled young man who, a year before, was ready to kill himself because his parents were going to institutionalize him had followed Harvey’s advice, taken his crutches, and boarded a bus for Los Angeles. He had registered to vote and that day cast his first ballot—against Prop 6. Harvey rarely showed emotion, but his voice cracked when he heard the news. The eighteen-year-old could hardly wait to meet his hero.

  * * *

  Three days later, Harvey and Doug Franks were sitting in Castro Camera, closing up the shop for the day. Harvey took a phone call and within moments was jumping up and down shouting, “That’s terrific. I can’t believe it. That’s too terrific to believe.”

  Once off the phone, Harvey started dancing around the store, unable to contain his excitement. “Dan White’s resigned,” he told Doug. “It’s just too good to believe. Now I’ve got my sixth vote—the sixth vote. Now I’ll really be able to get things moving on the board.”

  As Dianne Feinstein had said on inauguration day, “The name of the game is six votes.” Harvey and the other liberals had lost so many battles by the 6–5 conservative majority that year that the resignation of Dan White—caused, White said, by the financial hardship of the supervisors’ puny salaries—seemed a godsend, the final move that would give liberals complete control over City Hall. Harvey spent most of the weekend calling his political cronies with the good news. “We’ve got our sixth vote.”

  fifteen

  Curtain Call

  “You’re the asshole that passed that dog-shit ordinance, aren’t you?”

  The twenty people standing in line at the Haight-Ashbury ice cream parlor were in for a show. Doug Franks shrank back while Harvey adopted the most defiant New York demeanor he could muster.

  “Yeah, I’m that person.”

  “What’s wrong with you? What do you have against dogs? Are you a dog hater?”

  “What do you have against blind people?” Harvey shot back. “Do you know what it’s like to be blind and step in dogshit?”

  Everybody in line clapped. Milk could hardly hold back his smile as he railed on.

  “If you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you make it an issue and run against me?”

  The dog lover skulked back into the line while a beaming Milk congratulated himself on the performance. How he loved applause. And it wasn’t
even from gays or about anything gay. Everything was falling into place the way he had always wanted it to.

  The weeks following the unexpected victory against the Briggs Initiative gave Harvey a much-needed respite from the grueling schedule that had dominated his life since Jack Lira’s suicide. Never had Milk’s star seemed brighter. His role as chief gay spokesperson during the Prop 6 campaign thrust him to the forefront of the gay movement. The numerous televised debates had built him into a significant statewide presence as well, giving him added credentials as the chief gay wheeler-dealer with state and national politicians. In San Francisco, meanwhile, Harvey had long ago ceased being known as “the gay supervisor” and risen to be the most articulate champion of progressive causes. His particular interests in the concerns of the disabled, senior citizens, and Chinese-Americans had given him a constituency well beyond the boundaries of District 5.

  Harvey also was looking forward to his reelection campaign the next fall when, for the first time in his political career, he would be a shoe-in. He was far less concerned with the problems of winning District 5 than with winning the race by such a huge margin that he could lay claim to the board presidency. He had enlisted the popular Assemblyman Willie Brown to be his honorary campaign chair and lined up most of his major 1977 supervisorial opponents—Rick Stokes, Bob St. Claire, and Terrance Hallinan—to serve as Brown’s co-chairs.

  After 10 months as supervisor, the routine board tasks bored Milk, so he had taken up a host of other projects. He looked forward gleefully to the march on Washington. With Harry Britt he planned his debut in national Democratic Party politics as a delegate to the upcoming midterm convention, where he would make a dramatic appeal for gay rights.

  Harvey’s affair with Doug Franks blossomed. Doug could hardly have found a more ardent suitor. The usual romantic trimmings of any Milk affair, love notes and freshly cut flowers, flowed in abundance. When the pair attended a musical revue doing a takeoff on a Casablanca love scene, Harvey leaned over to croon softly in Doug’s ear “As Time Goes By” in harmony with the singers. For years, Harvey’s life had been a web of loose ends; now they were coming together as he had always wanted them to. One night while making love, Harvey and Doug both spontaneously broke into tears. They never talked about why.

  * * *

  Relieved and cheerful, as if a load was finally lifted, Dan White acted like a new man after he resigned from the board, thought White’s colleague, John Molinari. The pressures that had forced White’s impromptu resignation had, by now, become front-page news: the supervisors’ $9,600 annual salary wasn’t enough for White to support his wife and four-month-old son. His fried potato stand at the new Pier 39 complex needed his attention or it would fold. White’s resolution to quit politics made Molinari feel downright guilty. Molinari had spent the last seven years at boring meetings, decimated his family life, ruined any chance of getting ahead in his insurance firm, and even moved his family to a new part of town so he could qualify for a district seat. And what for? For $9,600 a year salary? Dan White is a man with his priorities straight, Molinari thought to himself as he watched the young man pack up. He hadn’t seen White in such a good mood in months.

  That’s why Molinari and the rest of the city’s political establishment was surprised when, ten days after the sudden resignation, White emerged from a meeting with leaders of the Police Officers’ Association and the Board of Realtors to say that he wanted his seat back. Mayor Moscone quickly handed White his letter of resignation and told reporters, “As far as I am concerned, Dan White is the supervisor from District 8.… A man has a right to change his mind.”

  That same afternoon, Congressman Leo Ryan from the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo arrived in Georgetown, Guyana, with a troupe of reporters and relatives of Peoples Temple members. Ryan had come to investigate the complaint of a constituent who worried that his grandson was being held in the Peoples Temple colony of Jonestown against his will. Ryan exuded a gruff Irish optimism that his mission would be a success, but he was privately worried about reports that Jones was degenerating into madness at the jungle compound.

  * * *

  The news that George Moscone was going to actually reappoint the former police officer shocked Harvey, who quickly set up an appointment with the mayor. Milk reminded George that White had been the swing vote in many of the 6–5 defeats that the mayor’s proposals had suffered in the board. Beyond that, White was the only city politician who had stepped forth as an active anti-gay spokesperson. You are up for reelection next year, Harvey goaded, and reappointing the city’s major anti-gay politico is no way to lock up the gay vote. Seeing the wisdom of Milk’s assessment, Moscone soon backed down from his earlier promise to reappoint White, and, sure enough, the city attorney issued an opinion citing a city charter passage that could be interpreted as blocking White’s reentry to the board. Moscone told White that in order to be reappointed, he would have to demonstrate support in his home district. That, Moscone knew, would be no easy task. Many of White’s original supporters had grown disenchanted with the novice politician, since White seemed much more interested in currying favor with police, business, and real estate interests than with his blue-collar constituents. When White held an angry press conference to pressure Moscone into reappointing him, he was flanked not by neighborhood activists, but by officials of the Board of Realtors and the Police Officers’ Association. Both groups had good reason to push for White’s reappointment, and, according to most accounts, both were instrumental in pressuring White to seek his old job back. Realtors were understandably shaken at Harvey Milk’s announced intention of passing a strict rent control ordinance to put the lid on skyrocketing rents. The loss of Dan White’s conservative swing vote might make that proposal a reality. The Police Officers’ Association, meanwhile, had been battling Mayor Moscone’s settlement of a racial discrimination suit against the SFPD. The settlement, which had thus far escaped board approval by a 6–5 vote, would have forced promotion and hiring of more minorities in the department. Moscone was pushing hard for the settlement in an effort that further infuriated many of the more right-wing officers. A police beat reporter was not particularly shocked to see written on a police station bathroom wall, “Who’s going to get the mayor?”

  * * *

  The fight over White’s reappointment was little more than a political sideshow. Most of the politicking was done behind closed doors. Supervisor Dianne Feinstein was the only board member to publicly back Dan White. Milk would make no on-the-record comments, using the opportunity instead to rally support for his proposal to raise supervisors’ salaries. The low salaries, he said, were part of a city government designed for the interests of those who wanted “only the wealthy class to run the city.”

  Harvey quickly got some personal insight into the problems of low salaries when he started reviewing Castro Camera’s books shortly after the Prop 6 election. During his fervent campaigning, Harvey had simply stopped working on the store’s accounting. A survey of the store’s debits and credits led him to one inescapable conclusion: Castro Camera had to close. The business had been thousands of dollars in debt before—after both the 1975 and 1976 campaigns—and managed to pull through, largely because Harvey had to have the business as a base of political operations. Ever since moving off Castro Street, however, both Harvey and Scott had been losing interest in the business. Its status as an informal community center had slipped away when Harvey went to City Hall. Without politics, Castro Camera was just a camera store and neither Harvey nor Scott had ever been interested in running just a camera store. Scott immediately agreed that Castro Camera was no longer worth the effort it took to keep it going. Harvey started looking around for a new job for Scott. A sign went up on the door announcing the business’s December 1 closing date.

  Other financial pressures were building up in those last weeks, problems Harvey did not confide to anyone, like the notice of garnishment from his bank. “The balance of your account has been held, pend
ing a release or demand for payment,” he was told. By late November, his major credit card account had also been declared in default and closed. Two banks were pressuring him for payments on past-due business loans. Harvey was scrambling for a way to solve his financial problems.

  * * *

  Congressman Leo Ryan has been shot.

  Details were sketchy on that startling Saturday night. Day after day, the story came out in bits and pieces. First the murder of Ryan, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, an NBC crew, and the shootings of several others at the Guyana air strip. Then, the first stories of how hundreds had committed suicide. Sharon Amos, the woman who had served as liaison between the temple and Milk’s assembly campaign, was found with her three children, their throats slit with a butcher knife. The Reverend Jones had long ago code-named his suicide drill plans “white night.” The San Francisco Chronicle, which had spurned its reporter’s attempts to investigate Jim Jones during his rise to influence, started running the grisly banner headlines: “400 Stood in Line to Die.”

  Congressman Ryan’s aides would later raise eerie questions of the State Department and the CIA’s role in the Jonestown tragedy, but early media attention in San Francisco turned to the many politicians who had worked with Jim Jones, particularly Mayor Moscone and District Attorney Freitas. The press doggedly researched the Temple, a research project that, had it been launched two years earlier, might have saved over nine hundred lives.

  This was only one of the mayor’s problems. An ongoing FBI investigation of an alleged $10,000 political pay-off from Howard Hughes’ Summa Corporation was beginning to draw media attention. Another FBI probe of both Milk and Moscone was looking into the pair’s attempts to get federal money for a gay community center. Convinced it was prompted by one of his gay adversaries who was jealously trying to get funding for his own community center, Milk didn’t take the investigation seriously. With the specter of scandal hanging over the mayor from both the Summa investigation and his Peoples Temple connection, however, it was a politically vulnerable George Moscone who emerged from the Guyana tragedy—and Harvey Milk knew it as the day of the final decision on the Dan White appointment neared.