The Mayor of Castro Street

by Randy Shilts

  * * *

  “That man is dangerous.”

  Harvey and Doug were walking up the grand marble stairway beneath the City Hall rotunda when Harvey nudged Doug and pointed to the handsome young man walking stiffly toward them. Doug thought the man looked more handsome than dangerous.

  “Who’s that?” Doug asked.

  “That’s Dan White,” Harvey said. “He’s a real closet case.” Every trace of Milk’s usual good humor dropped from his voice. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a closet case, someone fighting that inside of himself. He’s that much more hostile to anyone who is open.”

  Doug mentioned that he thought Dan White was cute.

  “Dan White is a closet case,” charged Milk, “and he’s dangerous.”

  Only in those final weeks did Harvey—who had previously talked of how White was “educatable”—use the word “dangerous” to describe White. Some associates later speculated that the pair might have had a run-in that drastically hardened Milk’s feelings against White, because the term now popped into Harvey’s conversations frequently when he talked about Dan. Harvey was not engaging in his normal political hyperbole. In an interview with gay activist-journalist Jack Davis, Harvey said that White was able to consider going back to the board because real estate developers had advanced him long-term, low-interest loans. The forces Milk most distrusted were behind White: Police Officers’ Association, realtors, developers, and downtown business interests. There was talk that White had only reluctantly allowed himself to go after his seat, that he had been pushed. Pushed hard. These interests had lost too many fights in recent years, with Moscone’s election, district elections, and the new, more liberal board, and they didn’t want to keep on losing.

  At a dinner with neighborhood activists that week, Milk buttonholed Chronicle reporter Dale Champion, a president of a District 5 neighborhood group, to warn, “You news guys should be looking into Dan White. He has a history of mental instability.” Milk explained to the rest of the activists that he chiefly opposed White because of the former policeman’s anti-gay posture. Champion later thought of the ironic picture that was used on the front of the invitations for the dinner, a reproduction of da Vinci’s classic “The Last Supper.”

  * * *

  Mayor Moscone set the next Monday, November 27, as the day he would announce whether he would reappoint Dan White or put someone else on the board. In a conversation Harvey boastingly repeated to his friends, Milk bullishly gave the mayor an ultimatum. “You reappoint Dan White to the board and you won’t get elected dogcatcher,” Harvey told him. With Peoples Temple bearing down on him, Moscone knew that the gay constituency was an important one he could nail down in advance. Newspaper stories, meanwhile, started carrying comments from “an unnamed supervisor” vociferously opposing White’s reappointment. That this supervisor was Harvey Milk soon became one of the city’s worst-kept political secrets.

  Charles Morris, the publisher of a local gay paper, had the comments in mind when he ran into Dan White at a political fund raiser. White was in a jovial, affable mood when they struck up a conversation. As for talk of opposition to his appointment, White said, “Those are just political pressures.”

  “There are some in the gay community who think that you might be anti-gay,” Morris said, putting the comment as gently as he could. White froze up at the suggestion: “He got so cold,” Morris recalled later, “that hell couldn’t have melted him. It sent chills down my spine.”

  “Let me tell you right now,” White said. “I’ve got a real surprise for the gay community—a real surprise.”

  With that, White turned and stalked away.

  Dan White did not like to lose. He was convinced he could win this one. “When the smoke clears Monday,” he told one television interviewer, “I’ll be a supervisor again.”

  * * *

  The holiday season was approaching, Harvey’s favorite time of year, but even as the Thanksgiving weekend neared, an unusual calm settled into Milk’s life, and he suddenly became preoccupied with wrapping up any outstanding business. He arranged to borrow several thousand dollars from his friend Carl Carlson so he could consolidate his debts. He turned in his leased car. He had been able to afford this luxury because it was a business expense. Now that there was no business, it had to go. He began making comments that didn’t make much sense at the time. Over lunch a friend suggested that they start strategizing about the run for mayor Harvey wanted to make in 1983. “I’m not going to be around then,” Harvey said. “Let’s talk about today.”

  Though Harvey wouldn’t talk of his own future, he gave an eloquent interview to activist Jack Davis about his vision of the future of San Francisco. Gays and Chinese would control the city within five to ten years, he said. He pointed to the many neighborhoods where gays were moving in and talked of the “beautiful flow” of communication between gays and heterosexuals in these newly integrated areas. He saved his most enthusiastic words for the neighborhood he had helped pioneer. “I could never have imagined five years ago that it would become like today,” he said. “I came out at fourteen. Even though I lived at home for several more years, it was never ‘home’ again, for in that home, I was closeted. In fact, I never had a home again and especially no hometown. Then came Castro Street. Castro Street became my hometown. For the first time in my life, there was a place to live, to shop, to play, to be where I felt at home. To many, Castro Street became their hometown. Even if for only a short time. It has become a symbol to many gay people—a symbol of being. You can go home again.”

  * * *

  Like the other buildings of the Beaux Artes Civic Center plaza, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House stood in neo-Classical splendor, its colonnaded front the perfect entrance for Harvey’s night at the opera that weekend. The night was a grand event for opera buffs—Magda Olivera, at 71, was making her debut in Tosca, Puccini’s violent tale of love, jealousy, and political intrigue, in which all the main characters either get murdered, executed, or commit suicide by the end. Harvey was the guest of local opera impressario Kurt Herbert Adler in Box A. At Harvey’s left sat Bidú Sayāo—the grand diva who had sung at the first opera Milk had ever attended back at the old Met some thirty-five years before. The crowd went wild when Sayāo was introduced. When the heavily gay throng saw her companion, shouts of “Bravo, Harvey” went up as well. When Harvey got home, he jotted off a quick note to his friend Tom O’Horgan in New York:

  Tom—

  Sitting in a box next to and talking with Bidú Sayāo and listening to Magda Olivera in her San Francisco debut at age 71.

  The crowd went so wild that Mick Jagger would have been jealous—I can’t remember any reaction like that—and Sayāo—was like a youngster hearing her first live opera—

  Ah—life is worth living.

  Love, Harvey.

  The night Harvey sent that letter, George R. Moscone celebrated his forty-ninth birthday.

  * * *

  The next morning, the papers reported that the original estimate of the Jonestown death toll was a gross underestimation. Instead of 400 dead, there were at least 780 bodies, maybe more. Authorities said they had undercounted because they had not seen that many more bodies laid under the top layer of dead who were rotting in the jungle sun. The same paper reported that Dan White had lost his attempt to get a temporary restraining order to block Moscone from appointing a new supervisor on Monday. White insisted he would be in the board chambers to take his seat whether Moscone appointed him or not. When Chronicle reporter Martland Zane told White that the mayor planned to counter White’s legal attempts to get the seat back, the former police officer fumed, “Well, now, the gloves are off.”

  “I’m worried about Dan White,” George Moscone reportedly confided to his wife. “He’s taking this hard. He’s acting sort of flakey.”

  The next day, the newspapers reported that 910 bodies had been found in Jonestown.

  * * *

  “The mayor makes the app
ointment tomorrow,” Harvey told his roommate, Billy Wiegardt. Billy knew that Harvey and George had spent long hours wrangling over the Dan White issue, but Harvey didn’t seem to know what was happening, so, as he cut Harvey’s hair, Billy refrained from asking more questions. The pair slipped into small talk. Billy had never cut anyone’s hair before, but Harvey had decided he had to have his hair cut tonight. Harvey was pleased that Billy had just written his mother in Long Beach, Washington, to tell her he was gay. Harvey always viewed such moves as personal victories. When Billy was done, Milk glanced briefly at his hair and then returned to shuffling his paperwork. Billy had to tend bar that night, so he kissed Harvey good-bye and left him in the house, alone.

  * * *

  It isn’t like Harvey, to talk so long, Don Amador thought. But there was Harvey, on the phone for thirty-five minutes, talking on about how he was turning in the car and closing the store. Small talk, Don thought; Harvey, however, never called for small talk. Don asked Harvey whether he should run for city council or school board. The city council race was inviting, but that was three years away and he could start running for school board right now. “Your job is to run for city council,” Harvey directed. “Don, you have time and age on your side. I don’t want you to be like me.” Amador never figured out what that comment meant. He finally found an excuse to cut the conversation off, but he couldn’t help later mentioning to his lover how odd it was that Harvey just kept on talking. Not like him at all.

  * * *

  “The strangest thing happened,” Bob Tuttle’s roommate told him later that night. Harvey had called earlier. No, he wasn’t calling to say he was coming down or anything. He just called to talk. When Bob wasn’t home, Harvey just started talking to his roommate, on and on as if he didn’t want to get off. Bob thought of all the phone conversations he had had with Harvey. Milk never seemed to like talking much on the phone. Always brief, to the point, and good-bye. Both Bob and his roommate agreed, it was weird.

  Harvey Milk, it seems, was lonely that night.

  * * *

  Mary Ann White returned from her trip to Nebraska at about 7 P.M. that Sunday night. She expected Dan to ask her if she had had a good time or a nice flight back, but he said nothing when she walked back in the house.

  “Oh, it was nice,” she said enthusiastically.

  But Dan White just walked through the house, plopped himself on the bed, and started watching television. The response didn’t particularly surprise Mary Ann. The pair had stopped having sex weeks before; White spent the nights in a sleeping bag on the living room couch. Dan hadn’t talked much in the past few weeks either. As usual, Mary Ann blamed herself, wondering what she had done wrong. When she mentioned that she was tired and wanted to go to sleep, White glanced up briefly and told her, “Well, I’m going for a walk.”

  * * *

  “I’m Barbara Taylor from KCBS. I’d like to speak to Dan White.”

  Mary Ann had heard the phone ring, though she couldn’t make out what Dan was saying in the other room.

  “I have received information from a source within the mayor’s office that you are not getting that job,” Taylor told White. “I am interested in doing an interview to find out your reaction to that.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” White said.

  White sounded surprised, Taylor thought. That, in turn, surprised her since she assumed White would already have heard the news. But Taylor needed a sound-bite for her story.

  Taylor rephrased her question, and got no usable answer so she thought of a different phrasing and asked again. Dan White hung up the phone.

  “Who was that?” Mary Ann asked.

  “Oh, it was just some newsperson.”

  Billy got home from work at about 3:30 that night. He slipped into bed next to Harvey who, as always, was snoring loudly. At about 6:30, Billy groggily heard the coffee grinder in the kitchen and the usual clatter that accompanied the creation of Harvey’s ritual morning cup of coffee. Harvey always tried to keep the noise down, but he was too much the klutz to be very quiet. Billy went back to sleep, only vaguely hearing the noise of the closing door as Harvey left for City Hall.

  sixteen

  No Cross, No Crown

  The glimmer of dawn was obscured by a dark curtain of clouds hanging over San Francisco.

  Dan White had stayed up all night, eating cupcakes, drinking Cokes, and finally watching the sun work its way over the horizon. White was still moping around the house when Mary Ann woke to go to work at the fried potato stand. She dressed the baby and left for the babysitter’s at 7:30 A.M.

  White’s aide, Denise Apcar, called at 9 A.M. to tell Dan that a group of his supporters planned to present Mayor Moscone with petitions and letters of support from District 8 voters. Since Mary Ann had the car, Dan asked if Denise would come and take him to City Hall. White hung up the phone, showered, shaved, and slipped into his natty three-piece tan suit. He walked downstairs to his basement den and picked up his .38 Smith & Wesson, the Chief’s Special model so favored by police officers. He checked the chamber; it was loaded. Stepping into a small closet off the den, he reached to the top shelf and pulled down a box of Remington hollow-headed bullets. He methodically pulled each bullet from the styrofoam case where they were individually packed. He counted out ten, two chambers’ full, slipped the gun into his well-worn holster, snapped the holster to his belt, and then carefully tucked the gun under his vest.

  * * *

  Cyr Copertini, George Moscone’s appointments secretary, was surprised to see the mayor’s black Lincoln limousine parked by the Polk Street entrance of City Hall when she arrived to work at 8:40 A.M. The mayor rarely arrived before her, but then she remembered today was to be a special day at City Hall. Cyr found her boss ebuliant that morning. He’d gotten a good response to his private soundings about appointing a liberal neighborhood activist to Dan White’s supervisorial seat. He’d finally have his working majority on the board. Moscone had originally planned a 10 A.M. press conference to announce the appointment, but he asked Cyr to delay the gathering until 11:30. George decided to take care of some phone work before then.

  A cadre of Dan White’s supporters were waiting in the mayor’s office when Cyr arrived. They wanted to present a stack of petitions to the mayor. Cyr offered to take the papers to him. No, they insisted, they wanted to see Moscone. Copertini returned to her office. George told her he did not want to see the delegation. Copertini was not surprised. Moscone was by nature a jovial man who avoided potentially nasty confrontations at all costs. He still had not told Dan White that he would not be reappointed. Copertini went back to White’s supporters, told them the mayor was busy, and promised to give them a receipt swearing that Moscone would have the petitions on his desk within minutes of when they handed them over to her. They relented and gave Cyr the petitions, shortly after 9 A.M.

  At about the same time, George Moscone dialed Dianne Feinstein’s Pacific Heights home. No, he was not going to reappoint White, he explained, even though the former supervisor insisted he would physically take his seat at that day’s board meetings, whether he got it back or not. George returned to writing out by hand his comments for the press conference. Later that morning, his close ally, Assemblyman Willie Brown, dropped in briefly and the two made arrangements to do some Christmas shopping that weekend.

  * * *

  A worried Dianne Feinstein was sitting in her small City Hall office a half hour after talking to Moscone. As president of the board, the decorum-minded Feinstein felt it was her responsibility to prevent the kind of donnybrook that might arise when two men, both claiming to be supervisor from District 8, tried to get in the same chair at that afternoon’s board meeting. She called a hurried meeting with a deputy city attorney and the board clerk to see if there were any legal tactics that could circumvent the problem. Finally, she decided she would try to dissuade White from forcing his way into the chambers. She told her aides to try to find White, and tell him she’d like to
have a chat before the meeting.

  * * *

  Dick Pabich and Jim Rivaldo had rarely seen Harvey in as good a mood as when he bounded into the office at 9 A.M. He was always bouncy on Monday mornings, since each board meeting gave him the chance to put on another show, but that morning, Harvey seemed particularly cheerful. Funding for a gay community center would be voted on that day, and Harvey figured he finally had his sixth vote. He chatted briefly with Jim and Dick, then strolled over to the mayor’s office where Moscone told him the news he wanted to hear—Dan White would not get his seat back. Buoyant, Harvey walked down the grand marble staircase and started to make his way toward a cafeteria where he could have his morning roll.

  * * *

  Doug Franks had been thinking about Harvey all morning. Just couldn’t get him off his mind, even as he left the senior citizens center where he worked and headed for the library. He was suprised when he ran into Harvey striding down the street.

  “I’ve never seen you so radiant,” Doug told him.

  “I am,” Harvey said. “I’m happy. I just came from George’s office. He’s not going to reappoint Dan White.”

  Milk wasn’t sure whom the mayor would appoint, but he knew he had the gay center vote and he was confident he had a sixth vote for many other decisions to come. The couple walked together to the cafeteria for breakfast. Harvey spent most of the next fifteen minutes talking excitedly about the march on Washington. No senators or congressmen could speak, he decided, unless they came out. They walked back to Civic Center, where Doug turned to go to the library and Harvey to City Hall. They agreed to get together that night for dinner after the board meeting.