Election night, 1977, was a night when we looked at each other in the clutter of Harvey’s camera store headquarters in a new way. I don’t think many of us had looked beyond that night—now we allowed ourselves to envision new possibilities, to sense that the magic Harvey had seen in us and built power around could spread and create a different future in which power and acceptance of diversity might come together. The people of District 5—GLBTQ and straight—had understood Harvey’s call to that future. Seemingly, he would now be able to lead us to his Promised Land.110
Milk’s triumphal message consummated the vision he had forged since 1973. “This is not my victory, it’s yours and yours and yours. . . . If a gay can win, it means that there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We’ve given them hope.”111
Harvey Milk’s forty-two and a half weeks as the first openly gay elected city official in the United States is captured metaphorically by the iconic photograph depicting his walk from the Castro to City Hall on Inauguration Day, January 9, 1978. The joyous occasion appears in the smiles on the faces of Milk and his constituents, including his troubled and troublesome boyfriend Jack Lira, around whose shoulder Harvey’s arm is intimately draped (openly sharing the day with his lover meant so much, personally and symbolically). In glancing at the photograph, it could be a depiction from a Gay Freedom Day parade; indeed, in an important sense, it was. But it might also have been a demonstration, not unlike those that followed the same path after Robert Hillsborough’s murder and Orange Tuesday, marching again for GLBTQ justice and equality. Although Milk now operated officially as a gay rights leader on the inside—as he had always insisted was necessary—rather than struggling against discriminatory power from Castro Street, he never stopped the street theater, the marching, the neighborhood activism, the campaigning. As he had stated in his 1977 Victory Statement, “I understand the significance of electing the first Gay person to public office and what his responsibility is not only to the people of San Francisco but to Gay people all over. It’s a responsibility that I do not take lightly. Whoever shoulders that responsibility must be willing to fight. It won’t be an easy task.”112 Where Milk was concerned, and as the photograph speaks, all political work, even the bureaucratic sort, constituted a mode of activism.
Electing to be sworn in on the steps of City Hall, where more might see and the spectacle might flash more brilliantly despite the falling rain, Milk’s inaugural words foretold the spirit of his leadership to come: “Anita Bryant said gay people brought drought to California. Looks to me like it’s finally started raining. . . . This is not my swearing-in, this is your swearing-in. You can stand around and throw bricks at Silly Hall or you can take it over. Well, here we are.”113 Milk’s first official act as supervisor introduced an anti-discrimination ordinance assuring gay rights in all employment, housing, and public accommodations in San Francisco. In his first major address, included among the 1978 selected documents, Milk told his audience, “I understand that my election was not alone a question of my gayness but a question of what I represent. In a very real sense, Harvey Milk represents the spirit of the neighborhoods of San Francisco. For the past few years, my fight to make the voice of the neighborhoods of this city be heard was not unlike the fight to make the voice of the cities themselves be heard. The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods.” A month later, Milk emphasized that his domestic policy chiefly concerned an “emotional commitment” or “patriotism” regarding the city and its “new demographics”: “The city is no longer primarily white, established, middle class, or even primarily married with children. It’s yellow, brown, black, with a steady influx into the middle economic class of people who were formerly lower economic class. It’s also increasingly young marrieds with no children, or young couples who aren’t married, or extended families, or gays, or singles, and most certainly seniors.” Ever the populist, progressive bridge builder, Milk would pave the way for a city he believed one day in the near future would be most heavily populated and influenced by Chinese and GLBTQ Americans.114
Milk quickly discovered that laboring in City Hall on behalf of San Francisco and its neighborhoods differed substantially from the grassroots efforts that championed it. Anne Kronenberg, now one of Milk’s administrative aides, explained:
Any glamorous illusions I had about coming to City Hall were quickly dispersed. I learned that the job was difficult, often thankless and always frustrating. Everybody thought we could solve their problems whether it was cars parked on sidewalks, dog poop in the park or street signs that needed repair. We were district representatives and Harvey was elected to handle these problems, to be the voice of District 5 in City Hall. Each morning Harvey would empty his pockets stuffed with scribbled napkins filled with names, numbers and constituent problems. . . . Life in City Hall was not as Harvey envisioned it either. It was one thing running a campaign, it was quite another working within a bureaucracy to accomplish your goals.115
Milk was often on the losing end of 6–5 votes on the Board. He often clashed with his fellow supervisors, perhaps especially, as the months passed, with District 8 supervisor Dan White.116 Although White’s campaign discourse in his conservative, Irish Catholic district had been unmistakably homophobic, Milk told his skeptical friends and colleagues that White was “educable” and promising. White’s early solidarity corroborated Milk’s intuition: persuading Board president Dianne Feinstein to appoint Milk chairman of the coveted Streets and Transportation Committee, voting with Milk to save the Pride Center and to honor the twenty-fifth anniversary of a lesbian couple, and endorsement in committee of Milk’s gay rights ordinance. Milk aide Dick Pabich observed, “He’s supported us on every position, and he goes out of his way to find out what gay people think about things.”117 Their relationship soured, however, after Milk reversed his position on the psychiatric treatment facility White sought to keep out of his neighborhood, casting the deciding vote. White’s thin-skinned and grudging character forged Milk’s perceived betrayal into an abiding animus and internecine rivalry. White would cast the only negative vote against the ultimately successful gay rights ordinance. As we know, White’s vindictiveness could and would go beyond the pale—tragically so.
Yet despite the bureaucratic drudgery required to solve the practical problems of his constituents, evidenced by quotidian correspondence found in his archives, and the frictions and frustrations of routine political wrangling on a Board with an opposition majority, Milk thrived. After memorably informing Mayor Moscone that Milk was “number one queen now,”118 the two, once politically at odds, became allies. Moreover, as Mike Wong observed,
Harvey was probably the most popular elected official in San Francisco today. . . . The women . . . who once labeled Harvey as anti-woman were now his supporters. Gay people found a committed defender of gay rights. The Toklas members had come to respect their once enemy. Liberals who once shunned him found him to be most receptive and enjoyable to work with. Neighborhood groups knew that they had a powerful ally on the Board. Harvey’s re-election list [by supervisorial lottery as part of the Board restructuring post-district elections, Milk was among those supervisors who would have to run for reelection in 2. rather than 4 years] now included endorsements from most of his former opponents and people who never gave him the time of day.119
Milk’s leadership also began to become more visible and influential on the state and national political scenes. He successfully helped organize the California Gay Caucus, creating a politically united front that would achieve coalitional solidarity and thus create pressure on political candidates of every stripe to support gay rights. The caucus enacted Milk’s vision long sought in his voter registration efforts and calls for GLBTQ power and indigenous leadership, embodying his belief that “Gay political clout must move forward in the face of the recent defeats in St. Paul and Wichita.”
Dominating Milk’s attention during most of what remained of that first year in office, and solidifying his reputation as a local activist stalwart with an expanding national reputation, was state