An Archive of Hope. Harvey Milk
preview of Milk’s campaign reveals the extent to which his vision had retained a balance and connectedness between GLBTQ concerns and those of all San Franciscans: “Milk’s four-point program calls for a ‘Fair Share’ tax for those who work in The City but don’t live here, for taxis and buses to be equipped so they can report crimes-in-progress directly to Police headquarters, for the Fire Department to be supplied with the most modern equipment available, and for ‘the Board’s present sense of priorities to be reoriented to the people and not to downtown interests.’”73 Indeed, his “Milk Forum” columns throughout 1975 not only reiterated the GLBTQ power blueprint he had been articulating but addressed a broad range of local issues, including national and city economic conditions, MUNI deficiencies, Yerba Buena development, property tax assessments and housing, bail bondsmen, the Coors boycott (again), and the police strike.
Of course, his gay rights advocacy continued apace during the 1975 campaign. In his “Milk Forum” columns, he railed against City Hall for not providing funds for the Gay Freedom Day Committee while doing so for others, and decried the lack of media coverage of an event with more than 80,000 participants and spectators; he reminded his readers of the value of holding their vote pledges so as to get the most from their political “friends” he urged a continuation of the GLBTQ Coors boycott even after the national Teamsters eliminated the local chapter’s effort; he called for lobbying in support of AB489 and AB633, the consenting sex and fair employment legislation pending in the California Assembly.
Significant, too, about the 1975 election is that candidates, especially for the mayoralty, courted votes and endorsements from the GLBTQ community as never before. Perhaps because of Milk’s trenchant critiques of the “gay groupie syndrome” and his passionate call for GLBTQ political power through decisive voting blocs, campaign hopefuls became increasingly attentive. How remarkable it must have been to read in the Los Angeles Times Supervisor John L. Molinari proclaiming, “The gay vote is a key element for any elected official in San Francisco.”74 Or to see mayoral candidate Dianne Feinstein chanting for the gay men’s softball team against rival police department at their fourth annual game; or to hear that Feinstein had hosted and presided over the lesbian wedding of Human Rights Committee liaison Jo Daly and her partner. Or to finally witness the passage of the state law legalizing sex between consenting adults, thus defeating sodomy’s long criminalization, thanks largely to State Senate Majority Leader and mayoral candidate George Moscone and his ally Willie Brown. Moscone’s conservative opponent in the runoff that December learned the hard way that you ignored or maligned “you people,” a term he used in a well-publicized meeting, at your political peril. Moscone publicly thanked Harvey Milk in his acceptance speech.75
Though Milk was not victorious, he finished seventh behind six incumbents out of a twenty-nine candidate field, despite renewed opposition from gay establishment politicos, with 52,649 votes, strongly supported from the Castro (where he garnered 60–70 percent) to Haight-Ashbury and Pacific Heights.76 Jim Rivaldo, who along with Frank Robinson and Danny Nicoletta had joined Milk that year, proclaimed in light of the prescient color-coded map at Castro Camera, “We got the hippie, McGovern, and fruit voters.”77 Milk described the GLBTQ presence in this campaign season as having achieved “unprecedented political influence.”78 Despite the defeat, Milk had arrived. As Clendinen and Nagourney observe, “No one considered him a fluke anymore. He was part of a phenomenon, the sheer accumulation of gay influence in the city. . . . The boldest, most visible new element of that voting population was in the Castro, and by the end of 1975, Harvey Milk was clearly its voice—and the most public gay figure in the city.”79
Were further proof needed of Milk’s new political capital, it came in Mayor Moscone’s appointment of him to the significant Board of Permit Appeals. (It had not hurt, of course, that Milk had publicly offered his unsolicited support to candidate Moscone in the run-off mayoral election against Supervisor John Barbagelata). Openly gay Commissioner Milk: a first in U.S. politics. As his friends and allies remembered, it certainly had a ring to it. Moscone called Milk “a pioneer.” Even better, he said Milk wouldn’t be a pioneer for long—the Bay Area Reporter headline read: “Moscone: Milk Appointment Is Just the Beginning.”80 The GLBTQ promise of the Moscone Administration was deepened by the appointment of Charles Gain as the first chief of police to publicly avow support for out cops on the force (for which Milk had been clamoring), as well as the election of District Attorney Joe Freitas, who pledged to end prosecutions for victimless crimes.81 In “Milk Forum” he gushed, “[T]he gay community now has a mayor—for the first time ever!—who is not only understanding of our particular problems, but who wants to correct the inequalities.”82
Ever the maverick, however, Milk served the shortest recorded term on the Permit Appeals Board; the Moscone dreams quickly soured. Milk had gotten wind of a purported deal among a number of state and national politicians, including Moscone, California Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy, Congressmen Phil Burton and his brother John, and Assemblymen John Foran and Willie Brown. It was a multi-move, multilevel political orchestration that would mend rifts and solidify the new Democratic regime in California, with implications for the U.S. Congress. The last person in this political pact: Art Agnos, a McCarthy aide, who would be the heir apparent of the 16th Assembly District—Milk’s District. Board of Supervisors President Quentin Kopp memorably called this political arrangement an “Unholy Alliance.”83 That Mayor Moscone had dismissed Milk from the Board of Permit Appeals on the grounds that one could not hold such a position while campaigning—when he himself had done so a number of times—heightened the stench for some. In the Bay Guardian article entitled “Ganging Up on Harvey Milk,” Bruce Brugmann and Jerry Roberts railed against what they described as “a naked, unabashed power play. . . . The hypocrisies abound.”84
True to political character, Milk was outraged by the machinations. As he said in his declaration of candidacy, among the selected 1976 documents: “I think representatives should be elected by the people—not appointed. 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.” Given the math—what that impressive map indicated about voting patterns in Milk’s campaigns, the 1974 vote total in the 16th District for John Foran, and the fact that Art Agnos was a political unknown—Milk’s prospects for success appeared strong. “Milk vs. The Machine” became the slogan derived from media that fanned Milk’s audacious challenge. This crusade seemed very much in keeping the vision Milk had championed since 1973. He wrote on his 1976 “Declaration of Candidacy” application: “My candidacy gives you a choice. Machine politics or an independent voice? . . . A Machine doesn’t serve people, it rewards only people who slave it. I will fight to prevent San Francisco from becoming a Chicago politically.”85
Perhaps it is too obvious to call Milk’s Assembly campaign a transitional moment, given the requisite performance on the larger stage and greater complexities of California state politics. The transition we have in mind here, however, is toward a national political arena, one that made possible his deft leadership in engaging and exploiting the more familiar homophobic national spectacle of 1977. Although Milk had always commented on issues of national concern, in 1976 his commentaries on the impact of the Coors boycott, the Supreme Court’s homophobia,86 Nixon’s legacy, the presidential primary election, California’s Nuclear Initiative, Angola, the failed revolutionary legacy of 1776, Bob Dole, and of course on GLBTQ lives and the gay rights movement all seem to suggest an ever-expanding political vision. After his own race had ended in June, Milk focused much attention on the presidential race. A picture of Milk shaking hands with Jimmy Carter appeared in the Bay Area Reporter, and his endorsement of Carter, announced in the selected document, “’Uncertainty’ of Carter or the ‘Certainty’ of Ford,” was enthusiastic despite Carter’s discomfort and ambivalence regarding the GLBTQ community. (Milk would later challenge President Carter to address the human rights of GLBTQ people and encouraged a writing campaign to lobby the White House.) Milk counseled his readers and supporters to learn lessons from the African American community by exercising their voting power in the election, by voting as a bloc for Carter and other candidates sympathetic to gay rights.87
At the same time, that broader vista only held meaning in relation