S.F.’s Hero of the Moment

In a bar here in the largely gay Castro District, Tara O’Neill sat shaking her head.

“I didn’t vote for him,” the 24-year-old law student said of Mayor Gavin Newsom. “And I regret that now. I feel like calling him up and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ ” Beside her at Harvey’s, a lively corner bar in the heart of the Castro, partner Sarah Richmond, also 24, nodded in agreement.

Only two months after a divisive mayoral election, Newsom’s bold, meticulously choreographed move to grant marriage licenses for same-sex couples has won him many converts in the gay community and gone a long way toward healing post-election wounds.

Response from across the county was so heavy that by noon on Sunday -- the fourth day of issuing licenses -- officials said they were overrun with paperwork, had to stop accepting applications and closed City Hall. It will reopen today, and by then, officials believe, the number of couples married will have reached about 1,600.

The wave of gay marriages has brought national attention to Newsom. But some believe his gain locally could cost him nationally, where the 36-year-old restaurateur and former college baseball player had been viewed by some as a promising future candidate.

Gale Kaufman, a Democratic strategist in Sacramento, applauded Newsom’s “bold” stand for civil rights. However, she said, some Democrats had been asking whether his stand could harm the party in the upcoming presidential election, when Republicans are expected to use the issue to portray Democrats as out of touch with the mainstream.

“I’m sure he considered on some level what the impact of his move would be to the Democratic Party and came to the conclusion that we’re much more tolerant as a party than a lot of the people make us out to be these days,” Kaufman said.

Newsom has said his decision was borne from his anger over President Bush’s State of the Union speech, in which he reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriages.

Before making the decision, Newsom Press Secretary Peter Ragone said, the mayor called several prominent Democrats in California and other states, most of whom told him it was a bad idea during a presidential election year. Even Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who is openly gay, told him the timing was off.

Ragone said that before Newsom announced his plan, he was approached by several members of his staff who were concerned about its effect on his political career. He said Newsom responded that he felt it was the right thing to do.

Even the strongest Newsom supporters in San Francisco worry that the issue could rebound against him on the national stage.

“Whenever he runs for any other office, this will be the first thing they will bring up,” said Marin County film editor Kathleen Korth, 51, who was one of the hundreds of people in line at San Francisco City Hall to be married Saturday.

Her partner, Laura Fenamore, 40, termed the move by Newsom “political suicide” but said she and others in the gay and lesbian community were extremely grateful that he had taken the risk, which she said was especially important coming from a heterosexual male leader.

“To have a straight, white, rich male do this for us is helping out our cause tremendously,” Fenamore said.

Whatever the national implications, Newsom is a hero to many here in San Francisco.

Building on his already strong support in the downtown business establishment and Asian communities, Newsom’s action gives him a much broader base from which to govern this idiosyncratic American city.

Even Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, Newsom’s fierce challenger in the mayoral race, has rallied to his former opponent’s side on this issue. “I took a phone call from a Midwestern radio station,” Gonzalez recounted. “It was ironic that I spent the entire time defending the mayor on this issue. He was being attacked. I was making it clear that while there may not be unanimity on the issue, we clearly have wide support for his actions and we’ve got to get behind him.”

Two-term San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, whom Newsom replaced in the ornate City Hall office, marveled at Newsom’s ability to rally bitter opponents to his side.

“Deep wounds were inflicted in the mayor’s election,” Brown said. “I think Gavin Newsom has done a marvelous job -- almost like he was part of the medical team on ‘Star Trek’ -- healing these scars.”

Brown, a longtime supporter of same-sex marriages, performed a mass wedding ceremony in 1996 for gay and lesbian couples in the Hearst Theater here but did not go as far as Newsom in granting and recording marriage licenses. “You’d have to go back to the civil rights movement to find a step as bold as this,” Brown said.

The fact that Newsom took the plunge on gay marriage and did it with flair, performing several marriages himself and hosting a celebratory cocktail reception for hundreds of newlyweds, also built bridges in the San Francisco left, which generally is delighted when it is out of step with the rest of the country.

Watching Massachusetts take the lead in the gay-union debate, for example, made some feel that San Francisco was falling behind from its historic role in the political vanguard.

“Here’s this battle raging on the East Coast,” said Gonzalez, who leads the city’s progressive political movement, “but San Francisco represents these values more than any other American city. Where were we in this national discussion? Why haven’t we pushed the envelope? In many respects, this is what it is all about. It is almost a coastal thing.”

Newsome is the son of a state appeals court judge; the mayor’s political career dates back eight years, when he was appointed to the Board of Supervisors.

Representing the upscale Pacific Heights District, where he lives with his wife, attorney and former fashion model Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, Newsom was subsequently elected three times before seeking the mayor’s job last fall.

The campaign was marked by a bitter divide over Newsom’s program for the city’s homeless population, “Care Not Cash,” which called for an end to San Francisco’s cash payment system that has been a magnet for homeless people around the state and country.

Newsom narrowly won with the backing of the downtown business establishment and generous support from wealthy patrons, including billionaire Gordon P. Getty, a longtime family friend.

Almost as soon as he was elected, his picture began to appear in Democratic Party publications and websites. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, touted him as a bright new Democratic hope.

Not everyone in San Francisco is delighted by the attention attracted by the City Hall marriages.

After a few games of racquetball, accountants Lloyd Marcus and Pete Fairwell, both 58, were hunched over beers at O’Shea’s Bar in the working-class Richmond District.

“It’s getting so when you meet a lady in another city, she assumes you’re gay because you come from San Francisco,” said Marcus, who is divorced and single.

But on the animated streets of the Castro District, Valentine’s Day weekend -- with its gay marriages and first-round victory against opponents in the courts -- produced a kind of political exuberance.

At Harvey’s, named for assassinated San Francisco gay political pioneer Harvey Milk, O’Neill, who is from Boston, and Richmond, a social worker who grew up in Glendale, were delighted with the turn of events.

The couple met two years ago when they were students at Boston’s Brandeis University. They moved West when O’Neill got accepted to the University of California Hastings School of Law.

“We wanted to live in an area where we wouldn’t even have to think about it if we wanted to hold hands,” O’Neill said.

Neither O’Neill nor Richmond feels she is ready for marriage.

“Oh my goodness, no,” O’Neill said. “We are much too young for that kind of responsibility. But it is exciting enough just to think that we might even have that option in our lifetime.”