As long as he doesn't sound gay

The mayoral candidate who articulated a growing angst in San Francisco may have been hurt at the polls because of the voice he said it in.

By Paul Festa

Dec 16, 1999 | Early in the run-off election for mayor of San Francisco, it became a truism that the contest between straight black incumbent Willie Brown and his white gay challenger Tom Ammiano was not about race or sexual orientation. Like most truisms, this one had a kernel of truth to it.

Even if the papers insisted on referring to the president of the Board of Supervisors as a gay comedian (the mayor was never identified as a black lawyer), voters and candidates kept the focus on rents, taxes, public transportation, planning and development. In San Francisco, an electoral debate over black or gay issues would be like a national election fought over prohibition or red-baiting.

But truisms have a tendency to fray around the edges, and the closer I got to the campaign the more tattered this one began to appear. On the brighter side, there were people, myself included, who wanted to see San Francisco elect the first gay mayor of a major American city. And conversely there were those who didn't think San Francisco should fire its first black mayor.

But in performing a variety of tasks for the Ammiano campaign -- registering voters, staffing tables, walking precincts, getting out the vote -- I came into direct contact with a broad cross-section of San Francisco residents, and the fact is that a number of voters on both sides chose their candidates Tuesday for the wrong reasons.

"You know what this election's about, don't you?" spat a grizzled Hells Angels type whom I was registering to vote in the Mission District, a bastion of Ammiano support. "It's about Willie Brown giving jobs to the goddamn blacks driving the Muni buses."

Of course, that's not at all what the election was about, at least according to an elderly, heterosexual white gentleman who approached me as I was electioneering in the Castro the following night. According to him, the election was about making sure Willie Brown didn't take away firearms from law-abiding white families, leaving the blacks with all the guns.

Ammiano was not the only candidate benefiting from a little voter bigotry. A gregarious but somewhat belligerent black man I tried to register shouted that I must be crazy if I thought he would ever support a homosexual for public office. I tried to turn the discussion to housing and public transportation; ultimately we agreed to disagree.

OK, so I talked to a handful of crackpots and creeps. But some of the less savory criticisms of Ammiano came from my friends. Theirs was a slightly more socially acceptable kind of a gripe, expressed in private, though the issue did surface in the press. The issue was Ammiano's voice. One gay voter I know cited this as a key reason he remained undecided the weekend before the election.

"I know it isn't something we're supposed to talk about in this community, but I just can't get past his demeanor," complained this friend. "He just sounds silly." People could be heard fretting over what an "embarrassment" Ammiano would be to the city. Again and again I heard it, from gays and straights alike: How could we have a mayor with "that voice"?

Over the past several weeks I have spent a lot of time listening to Tom Ammiano's voice. The first time in this campaign it was at a debate before the San Francisco Neighborhood Coalition, at which Brown was a no-show. Ammiano spoke to the group, uninterrupted except by questions and applause, for most of an hour. He was articulate, his answers were detailed and direct, his solutions were innovative, his grievances against the current administration were compelling, and his sympathies were clear. And his voice, the source of so much anxiety and discontent, was that of a big queen.

But I did not find the candidate silly. I found him credible, passionate, knowledgeable, high-minded and apart from a few quips immensely serious. I was not embarrassed, either as a San Franciscan, or as a gay man. "My voice may be high, my orientation may be gay, my politics may be left," Ammiano told his weary, devoted and unembarrassed supporters last night.

"But we are right, and we have moved San Francisco. We have been the voice for people who have been shut out and we will be shut out no more!"

It's fine rhetoric, but is it true? If even the gay voters in this city can't vote for a gay candidate who -- like Willie Brown -- sounds like what he is, how genuine is our liberalism?

Next Page: The candidate who became a cause

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