Mayoral Battle Polarizes S.F. Over Gay, Race Issues : Politics: Former Police Chief Frank Jordan winning support of those who want a change in city’s direction.

Matt Carlin, a 33-year-old construction worker, is an enthusiastic supporter of mayoral candidate Frank Jordan. They have much in common: Both were born in San Francisco and both are of Irish descent.

Most important to the burly laborer, Carlin believes that the former police chief’s campaign has given a new voice to San Francisco’s conservatives, especially those who believe bitterly that their town has been overrun by gays, lesbians and minorities.

“Frank Jordan remembers what the city was like before--before the (gays and lesbians) got in and took over,” Carlin said. “San Francisco is a great city, but it was better before they got here.”

Jordan, whom even his enemies call a kind and amiable man, has not directly courted the city’s most embittered and bigoted voters. But they are flocking his way, and the runoff race between the moderate career cop and liberal Mayor Art Agnos has polarized San Francisco over issues like race and the city’s famed tolerance of many lifestyles.

“I hope this campaign will not tear San Francisco apart,” said the Rev. Cecil Williams, an activist black minister and Agnos supporter. “In the next few weeks, we could be torn one side of the town against the other.”

Added Williams: “Diversity, a pluralistic society, can be very threatening to people, especially if it means more of us are going to be sharing power.”

The Dec. 10 election comes as San Francisco is reeling from the national recession, and struggling to cope with more cultural diversity than even this old seaport city has seen before. Irish and other people of European descent are no longer a majority, and as many as 20% of the people who usually vote are thought to be homosexuals.

San Francisco has always held a strong conservative streak, especially in outer neighborhoods like the Sunset where Irish and Italian families retreated as the city changed. After a long stretch of liberal control, Jordan has given the neighborhoods hope they can put one of their own in City Hall.

Agnos, trying to counter the conservative tide, has invoked the memory and name of the late Dan White, a former policeman who was elected supervisor out of the Excelsior neighborhood and became a popular hero to conservatives. In the middle of a 1978 political fight, he sneaked a gun into City Hall and assassinated liberal Mayor George Moscone and the city’s first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk.

The Dan White era is the ugliest chapter in San Francisco history to many residents, especially the gay community. White committed suicide in 1985 after serving less than five years in prison.

“After the terrible thing Dan White did, the people who supported him went into seclusion, so to speak,” Agnos said in an interview. “But now there’s another candidate who uses a better code but clearly gives rise to the same rhetoric.”

In recent weeks, hostilities that usually remain unspoken in San Francisco have come bubbling to the surface. On Nov. 5, when Jordan finished ahead of Agnos in the mayoral primary election, a supporter at the victory celebration kept interrupting Jordan with shouts of “Straight people! Straight people!”

Agnos campaign workers say they frequently are taunted with shouts of “faggot lover” as they walk precincts. Agnos said he was playing with his son in his front yard when a Jordan supporter drove by yelling “Fagnos.”

No one has accused Jordan of personally advocating an anti-homosexual philosophy. His campaign manager, Jack Davis, is a well-known local gay political activist.

But the message of his campaign--that San Francisco was better off before--seems to have galvanized resentment about gays and others. Jordan’s campaign ads show pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction in the 1930s, contrasted with images of today’s crime, graffiti and homelessness. To many, it is a reminder of San Francisco’s glorious past--and also a time when white heterosexual men controlled the city.

Jordan uses footage of recent gay riots in San Francisco in a TV ad, and has a brochure featuring a picture of himself being shoved by gay demonstrators and the slogan, “You can push Frank Jordan, but you can’t push him around.”

Jordan also has not directly renounced the bigotry shown by some of his supporters. Instead, he has talked in general terms of the need to maintain San Francisco’s “diversity” and has pointed the finger at Agnos for fomenting divisiveness. In fact, Jordan campaign aides complain that their volunteers have been assailed as fascists by Agnos forces.

“An act of injustice against any person is an act of injustice against us all, and all of us must repudiate those who would divide and separate us,” Jordan said in a campaign speech. “I firmly believe that whenever a rock is thrown, a threat is made, a curse is shouted, we all are the victims.”

Agnos, whose popularity has plummeted after four years in office, is acting as if his best shot at winning reelection is to portray Jordan as a mayor who would surround himself with bigots. Some political observers say it is an effective strategy, predicting that the mayor would lose if the voters concentrated on his record of managing the city.

Agnos has begun running ads that try to mobilize opposition to the former police chief among the liberals, minorities, gays and lesbians who together constitute a majority of the city’s potential voters.

One ad features septuagenarian jazz musician Vernon Alley, who as a young man was excluded from the San Francisco police force because he is black.

“A lot of angry people say they want to bring back the good old days,” Alley says in the ad. “But for a lot of us the good old days were only for the good old boys.”

Another Agnos ad features Bud Hinkle, a gay man who suffers from AIDS. “I see the quotations from people who are saying that Dec. 10 is their chance to get rid of all the faggots,” Hinkle says. “And I wonder if a campaign supported by such hatred for us will bring an administration that will fight to keep us alive.”

Whether or not Jordan’s candidacy is built mainly on anti-homosexual sentiment, there is no question that dislike for gays and lesbians is a popular theme in some parts of the city.

The sentiment was obvious at a recent boxing match featuring Pat Lawlor, a local hero in the city’s Sunset District, a conservative stronghold.

Lawlor, who bills himself as “Irish Pat Lawlor, Pride of the Sunset,” flirted earlier this year with the idea of running for mayor himself. He even had his slogan all ready: “If you’re mad as hell and want to holler, cast your vote for Irish Pat Lawlor.”

The middleweight boxer, who happens to be dating Jordan’s niece, is now backing the former police chief. On the night of the fight, Lawlor wore a T-shirt imprinted with the message “It’s Great to be Straight.” Later, when he stepped into the ring, he wore a shirt that read “Jordan for Mayor.”

The fight itself seemed a political metaphor for many in the crowd. Some of Lawlor’s fans yelled sexual epithets at his opponent, a boxer from Denver. “For the good of the neighborhood, Pat,” one fan shouted over and over.

After winning in 12 rounds, Lawlor said he objects to the political influence of gays and lesbians in San Francisco but rejects the term homophobia to define his views.

“I have no fear of homosexuals,” he said. “I just think that they have gotten out of hand politically in the city. All the laws go their way because they are voting.”

Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, one of two lesbians on the elected 11-member board, said Jordan’s campaign has emboldened the faction of the city that is angry about the high profile and political clout of the city’s gay community. And she criticized Jordan for trying to capitalize on hatred toward homosexuals.

“Unfortunately, he has not gone out of his way to denounce it and set a moral tone that that kind of behavior will be tolerated,” said Achtenberg, an Agnos backer. “I believe he will not do it, because he is dependent in part for the energy of his campaign on these people.”

In 1989, there were 183 reported hate crimes targeted at gays, minorities, Jews or members of other groups, the Police Department said. During the first 10 months of this year, 344 hate crimes have been reported. Police caution that the increase could reflect better reporting of such crimes, but Agnos contends it is a measure of rising intolerance in San Francisco.

Jordan supporters, however, say that intolerance has always been a part of San Francisco and that now it is just getting more attention. The former chief’s campaign also accused Agnos of fanning the flames of bigotry.

“Art is trying to incite the gay community to think they really have something to fear if Frank is elected,” said campaign spokeswoman Dee Dee Meyers. “A lot of people are dissatisfied with the way the city’s going. That doesn’t mean they want to turn back the clock on civil rights.”

Meyers also denied that Jordan is making a special appeal to anti-gay voters, although Jordan himself has not renounced Lawlor and others with similar opinions.

“Clearly there are people in this town who are homophobic,” she said. “They are more inclined to support Frank than they are to support Art. But it’s an element that is not welcome in his (Jordan’s) campaign.”

Public opinion polls indicate that, in fact, Jordan is taking positions that are more liberal than most of his supporters, said David Binder, a San Francisco pollster.

For example, Jordan opposed a measure on the November ballot that would have repealed San Francisco’s domestic partner law, which allows gays to register their relationships at City Hall. But of those who voted for Jordan, Binder said, 62% also voted to repeal the law.

“There’s a large section that thinks the gay power in this city is disproportionate,” Binder said. “Not all of Jordan’s backers are homophobes, but all the homophobes are backing Jordan.”