My father is an honest and loving man, blessed with a wry sense of humor. But my confession put him on the spot and rendered him speechless. It didn’t feel good when it happened, and it hasn’t always been easy since then. Sometimes he would distance himself, and sometimes I’d do the same. Then I’d ask Ellen to intervene. Daddy is a little afraid of Ellen—and so am I. We both pretty much do what she says.
My father and I have a unique and significant way of communicating, and in reality we are extremely close, although ours is different from many father-daughter relationships. We both know how much love there is between us, and even if we don’t express it in words, we show it in actions. It helps to remember—and I have to remind myself—that my father exists on two planes that are contradictory, which I think a lot of parents of gay children face, especially those whose religious tenets conflict with their love for their child.
But the most important thing about my father is that he reached beyond a lifetime of traditional beliefs in order to support and embrace me, my friends—who have become his friends—my work, and the woman I love. He is there whenever he is needed—he’s introduced me at every State of the City address I’ve given since I was elected Speaker in 2006. He marches every year in New York City’s LGBT pride parade. And he walked me down the aisle at my wedding.
My dad has spent a ton of time stuffing envelopes for LGBT efforts and going to LGBT events. He still makes jokes. He calls the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats the “Gaelic League of Independent Democrats.” And he told my sister that doing mailings for all these different LGBT groups was the twentieth-century version of a gay quilting bee—you all sit around a table, stuff envelopes, and talk.
It took time for my father to reach this point. I can’t say I know what the journey has been like for him. As I’ve said, we’re not a family that talks about such things. But for me the most significant lesson is that people have an enormous ability to evolve and accept. You can’t demand that everyone evolve and accept in the ways you want them to, but things work out. And the love that exists between my father and me is palpable. Though it is silent in words, it is loud in deeds.
CHAPTER 7
Duane’s World
When I first went to work for Tom Duane’s 1991 campaign, we didn’t know who his opponent in the primary would be. It was a newly redrawn district that was heavily LGBT. The incumbent decided not to run again, and then Liz Abzug, whose mother was the legendary feminist liberal congresswoman Bella Abzug, decided to run. Liz was also LGBT.
Tom had very deep roots as a neighborhood and LGBT activist. As my father used to say, “The man joined everything!” He had been a district leader and a community board member, and he had written a zoning plan for the neighborhood, for starters. It was almost impossible to identify a local issue that Tom hadn’t been involved in, at least tangentially. He was committed to the people in his district on all levels, and he felt a personal urgency around LGBT issues and HIV and AIDS.
Tom was HIV positive. He told me this in a completely roundabout way one night, and we often still joke about it.
He called me late one evening at work when I was the only person in the office, and he said, “They formed this new HIV-positive Democratic club, and they’re going to have their first meeting.”
“Great, you should go,” I said.
“Well, it’s only for people who are HIV positive,” he said. “It’s not for allies.”
“Well, I think you can probably still go as a candidate,” I said.
And he said, “Well, I am HIV positive, so if I go more people will know.”
Only a bit surprised, I shook my head. How are we going to deal with this? I wondered. But Tom knew—he already had a plan.
Tom had to be honest about his HIV status, and he was determined to be, so there was never any question that he would go public. But we had no idea how people would react. And we could not anticipate the potential fallout. Today it would not be as major an issue, but you have to put yourself back into history. This was 1991. AIDS was still a complete epidemic.
There was real prejudice against people who were infected with HIV and tremendous fear about the disease. As far as we could tell, Tom would be the first openly HIV-positive person to run for public office anywhere in the world. We lacked precedents for what was happening, but luckily a volunteer on the campaign was a public relations director for a large nonprofit, and he helped us develop a plan and manage the media storm.
We settled on sending out, at the beginning of the campaign, a very simple personal letter from Tom to all his constituents, in which he discussed his HIV status. We leaked a copy of the letter to the New York Times and timed the mailing so that the letter would get to people the same day the Times story broke. So that morning there was a cover story in the Times’s Metro section about Tom’s HIV status. (Back then there was still a separate Metro section with local news.)
We had arranged for Tom to be out leafleting at a subway entrance on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street that morning. The response was beyond anything anyone could have imagined. Dozens of reporters and photographers and television cameras showed up at a press conference later that day, and Tom calmly took everyone’s questions. The night before the Times story, the phone rang off the hook, and the PR guy who was helping us said, “Just don’t answer it.” Those were the days of answering machines, and we could hear all the messages people were leaving. One of the calls was from the New York Post, which had gotten wind of the letter we had leaked to the Times. I’ll never forget this one message, in a voice that was classic New Yawkese: “Will somebody pleeeeease cawwwwwwl the Neeeeeew Yaaaaawk Post!”
Tom’s campaign team was a typical Duane mix: old-time neighborhood campaign people, LGBT folks, people who had been engaged in politics for a couple of races, and gay folks who were newer to the political scene. AIDS and LGBT activists seized the opportunity to help elect the first openly gay and openly HIV-positive candidate for City Council.
And you have to add my father to the mix, because when I went to work for Tom—as in everything else I have done—he came along with me. My father likes to joke that he virtually financed Tom’s campaign. That’s an exaggeration, but he was certainly generous and involved. If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he bought eight dollars’ worth of bagels for the campaign staffers and volunteers every day, which they really appreciated. He drove volunteers to places where they set up tables for campaigning. People loved him. He’s funny and colorful and entertaining. And he enjoyed it, too, and I loved having him around.
My dad is a terrific storyteller. And he sure has stories, from both past and present. His Irish roots and working-class history make for quite an epic. And his years as shop steward at Sperry are the source of a tale or two. Telling stories, and telling them well, is an art. And my father is a master. He is also a very good active listener. So the people I worked with then, and the people I work with now, came to admire him and enjoy spending time with him. He’s quirky and funny, and he’s always there in a great way.
The thing I quickly discovered about running a campaign was that you have absolutely no time to manage things in an orderly way—it’s so fast moving. You don’t have the luxury of sitting down with someone to talk. I learned to be grateful and appreciative when I could tell people what they were doing well, because undoubtedly I’d have to point out what they were doing wrong, too. A campaign is not always a matter of management, but it is always a matter of momentum.
Tom and I complemented each other’s strengths and weaknesses most of the time. We are both stubborn and have tempers, and during the campaign—and later when I was his chief of staff—we’d sometimes get into it. When I feel like I’m not being listened to, like I’m being disregarded, it gets to me. I try to control my temper, but sometimes I can’t help it, and with Tom things could get pretty heated. Whenever that happened, after the storm passed Tom would reassure the staff that everything was okay by saying someth
ing like “Mommies and daddies often fight, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.” We were an unusual set of parents—and we loved each other.
In New York City, the primary happens in September and the election follows in November. We knew Tom would have no significant challenger in November, so the primary was the real election for us. Primary day was a huge managerial operation. You sent people out to leaflet at the subways and the polling places, to put up posters, to knock on doors, and to make sure the phone banks were running, that kind of stuff. You’d break up the district into sectors, and the sector coordinators would drive around in cars checking in on the different polling places to make sure the people you had assigned to be at the polls had enough leaflets and other supplies. The people assigned to the polls had to call in to campaign headquarters in the morning, at midday, and at five p.m. to give us the number of people who had voted. We’d get calls about this or that machine not working, and we had to deal with any other problems that came up.
I stayed in our storefront office on Eighth Avenue all day coordinating things. By evening, it was pretty clear Tom was going to win. Everybody was gathering at the restaurant next door: volunteers, supporters, press, and elected officials. It was packed. At some point Tom arrived and was surrounded by a sea of people. I watched from the back of the room.
On election night you’re on adrenaline, so you’re thrilled and exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time. It was an incredible high, especially because I knew how much Tom’s win meant to so many people whose voices hadn’t been heard in city government before. His election was a turning point. This was the third or fourth time a gay person had run for that particular City Council seat, but it was the first time a gay person had won. After all this effort and all this time, it felt like a ceiling had cracked. The community had battled the government for recognition and for the gay rights bill, and were still fighting for better funding for HIV and AIDS. They had waged so many battles, and they would fight many more, but this was a great victory. We had no illusions that the trials were over, but now at least we’d have somebody on the inside helping the fight. And as Tom’s new chief of staff, I’d have a chance to help with all these efforts.
Chief of staff to a City Council member” may sound like a big title, but in truth I was the chief cook and bottle washer. The offices for councilmembers were, and still are, not big. We had a staff of three or four. My job was to manage the staff, oversee the legislative and budget work, coordinate the press and the scheduler, and oversee the staff’s work with constituents and the local community boards.
New York City has a total of fifty-nine community boards with about fifty members each. Community boards have an advisory role on everything from transportation to zoning. In our district, we basically had three community boards (and small pieces of two others—community board and City Council districts don’t cover exactly the same territory), and we were expected to have staff people at all their meetings. There are a lot of community board and other community meetings, and if we failed to send somebody to a meeting, it would not go unnoticed.
My father, who often volunteered to answer the phone at our district office, tells the story of a community board member who called to complain. They’d had a subcommittee meeting of some kind the night before, and the board member said, “Duane’s office wasn’t there.”
“No, you’re mistaken, I know we were there,” my father said.
“I have the attendance list right here in front of me, and you weren’t!” the caller replied. It was that kind of district, so you did your best to make sure you had a staffer at every meeting and every place they needed to be. People really care, and they demand and should get attention. That’s what makes our city great.
A flood of letters came in from constituents, and to deal with them, I developed a system to make sure that nothing slipped through the cracks. In those days, constituent complaints and requests came by regular mail, and there were thousands of them. A staff member would photocopy the front cover of every piece of mail that got forwarded to them, and that copy would go into its own folder for the staff person to deal with. We’d meet once a week to go through the folders. If the constituent’s problem had been addressed, we’d take the copy out of the folder and close the case. If there were still issues, we’d write ways to deal with the problem on the copy. The designated staff person would follow up that week. The next week we’d go through the folders again, so that ultimately everything would be addressed in some way or another.
I’ve always said to staff who work with constituents that even if you don’t have an immediate answer, it’s better to call that person back or write to them and say, for example, “I’m waiting to hear from the Department of Buildings, and I share your frustration over the delay.” Because what the constituent wants, besides an answer to his or her question, is to know that they’re being heard.
I believe it’s essential to respond to every letter, e-mail, and phone call that comes in from constituents, and to do so in a timely way. The person who takes time out of a busy day to write a letter to their elected official deserves to have it recognized and to know that the people who work for them are paying attention to them. Your constituents are your customers, your clients, and the people you work for. It’s their government, and they’re paying for it. If you don’t respond, you wind up forever coloring a citizen’s opinion of government in a negative way. This management technique turns up in successful customer-oriented businesses, but back then we were devising seat-of-the-pants solutions to problems that mattered to us.
For Tom, constituent work came naturally, but he faced the same kind of challenge that almost every new councilmember faces: figuring out how to go from who you were before you were elected—usually some type of neighborhood activist—to this new position, where you not only have to represent your district and your local constituency but you are also expected to weigh in on broader, citywide issues. Tom was particularly interested in neighborhood preservation and land use. And because he was the first openly gay and openly HIV-positive councilmember, he was very interested in promoting domestic partnership legislation. He was the strongest voice in the council for issues concerning HIV and AIDS. He felt a particular responsibility to represent all New Yorkers affected by HIV and AIDS and who were LGBT, because he could do it with the kind of authority and passion that no one else on the council could.
Like all elected official’s offices, we needed to build support for Tom’s work by getting press, and here my high school and college experiences came in handy. Our great mix of people and our funny and flexible councilmember came up with all kinds of ways to get people to pay attention to our issues. Some were great and impossible, and some were worth a try. For example, for a health-care press conference on the issue of getting growth hormones out of milk, we had someone dress up like a cow and stand on the steps of City Hall.
Another time we went after landlords who were failing to take care of their buildings or harassing their tenants to get them to move out so they could raise their rents. We had a slogan, “Landlords are skunks, they make our neighborhood stink,” which was accurate, if a bit harsh, and it got people’s attention. For that press conference and picket, we had someone dress up like a skunk. Then there was the (not so)famous turkey episode. Later, when I was on the council, we found out that the old McBurney YMCA, which used to be on Twenty-third Street, was selling its building and was going to evict its tenants from the SRO. It was all going to happen around Thanksgiving. So we had our intern dress up in a turkey costume to get attention for our protest.
I was always renting costumes. Was this a holdover from my Sports Nights and from my year as Trinity’s Bantam mascot? Or was it just fun? It was all of the above, and it was good for getting press attention. We learned from other elected officials that if you did a press conference on a Sunday, which is often a slow news day, and you had someone dressed in a costume to illustrate an important campaign issue, y
ou’d usually get press.
Daily life in a City Council office was generally driven by what was on the calendar: hearings, budget meetings, and community board meetings. If tenants in the district were having a problem with their landlord, you might see whether there was a legislative solution to their issue. In general, for a new councilmember, it’s very hard to get any kind of legislation passed because you don’t have seniority. Our activist experience made us also look for things we could get done ourselves, by organizing.
Here is an example. There were several terrible tenements on West Twenty-second Street, owned by two guys who, simply put, were slumlords. A lot of people living in these buildings had been placed there by the Division of AIDS Services. (DAS provides key support for city residents living with HIV and AIDS, ranging from referral to support groups and medical providers, to help with finding housing and financial resources.) Even though these owners were getting a ton of money in rent from the city to house people living with HIV and AIDS, they were providing extremely substandard living conditions. This was a perennial problem, and unfortunately it still exists to some degree.
So we organized what turned out to be a multiyear effort to get them to clear up the violations on their buildings or to sell them to responsible owners, which is what they eventually were forced to do. This campaign lasted for so long that we were still working on it by the time I took over Tom’s seat on the City Council.
After I was elected, we got a local morning television news show, Good Day New York, to do a story about how these awful landlords weren’t providing heat in the dead of winter. We arranged to do the story in the freezing-cold apartment of a DAS client in one of these buildings. I showed up at the apartment at five-thirty or six a.m., and he had the kitchen stove blasting heat because he didn’t want it to be cold for the television crew! He was being considerate to us and the crew. I said, “Turn off the stove! Open the windows!” We couldn’t do a story about a freezing apartment if it was eighty degrees inside!
With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir Page 8