Odd Man In

When the lone member of a locally under-represented minority disappeared from the board of supervisors last fall, Examiner columnist Rob Morse pictured the aggrieved group taking to the streets, rhythmically challenged straight white males chanting: We’re here. We’re sincere. Get used to it.

“You almost wouldn’t know we’re still running the town,” wrote Morse, who is openly heterosexual. “Perhaps we’ve been priced out of the board. After all, what self-respecting straight white male will accept $23,924 a year to kiss Mayor Brown’s calfskin shoes and listen to little old ladies complain about potholes?”

Gavin Newsom, it turns out, who was tapped for the board in February by Mayor Willie Brown. Newsom, 29, is a fourth-generation San Franciscan from a well-connected, politically active family whose only governmental experience was a six-month stint listening to citizens grumble about bus zones and meter maids as director of the Parking and Traffic Commission.

In most places, Newsom’s resume would be the most distinctive thing about him: Four years ago, he opened an upscale wine shop near the flamboyantly heterosexual Marina District neighborhood where he lives that has grown into nine businesses with 300 employees, flung from Lake Tahoe to the Napa Valley, with a Hawaiian resort deal in the works. Not in San Francisco, which Jerry Falwell once called “the Wild Kingdom.” Thus the recent screaming headline in the Examiner: “Board gets a straight white male.”

“It’s embarrassing,” said Newsom, tall, trim and hyper-articulate. “It doesn’t say anything about me. I sure as heck expect to be known as more than a straight white male.”

That might take some time in a town where the Human Rights Commission recently reprimanded a gay bar for banning heterosexual kissing.

“The straight white male seat” on the board has been vacant since November, when Supervisor Kevin Shelley was elected to the Assembly--where he will not exactly be an endangered species--and the mayor found himself being pressured by supporters of a certain sexual orientation. “I certainly am not going to be having on the application, ‘Are you straight?’ I don’t know how you ask that question,” Brown snapped last fall to story-sniffing reporters. “But I will be looking to make sure the board is representative of San Francisco.”

The finer points of Brown’s decision were obscured as soon as he promoted Newsom, whose telegenic face and slicked back hair are fixtures of the society pages. “He is young, male and appears to be straight,” the mayor noted. (Indeed, he allows he’s been dating the same woman for three years.) Local cartoonist Don Asmussen drew girls fainting at supervisor meetings, where people have been known to snooze but never swoon, and announced: “He’s a breeder.”

Newsom certainly stands out on the 11-member board, which includes a gay white male, a Latino male, a Latina lesbian, a Jewish lesbian, an African American reverend, a Chinese American of each gender and a Hawaiian-Japanese-Chinese American. Former hooker Margo St. James came close to getting elected last year, although her candidacy was plagued by rumors that she may have lied about being a hooker.

The board’s recent history is as colorful as its membership. During the Gulf War it declared the city a haven for conscientious objectors. Last year the board banned pizza delivery red-lining and raised the possibility of legalizing prostitution. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, a gay former stand-up comic, also floated the idea that city employees were entitled to sex change operations as part of their benefits. (The board had already banned discrimination against cross-dressers and trans-genders--which meant, Ammiano quipped, a guy can’t get a pink slip for wearing one.)

Ammiano is the board’s current firebrand. “I’m here, I’m queer and I’m not going shopping,” he shouted in December at an anti-sweatshop protest at Macy’s, where the police cited the politician for blocking entrance to the store.

All of which is cause for despair to another largely closeted minority.

“It’s tough being a Republican in San Francisco,” sighed Don Casper, chairman of the local Republican Party, which claims 15% of the city’s electorate, its weakest showing since 1922. “There’s been so much over so long a period of time that we’re inured to it. In a perverse way, we welcome it; it marginalizes the board, it fades further into irrelevancy with each crazed resolution they take.”

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Things weren’t always that way. It was only in 1977 when Supervisor Harvey Milk became famous as the first prominent openly gay elected official in the country. In fact, insular San Francisco was long dominated by an Irish-Italian political machine, many of whose members the young Newsom used to see at the family hangout in North Beach after Little League games. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is a cousin; state Sen. John Burton a close family friend.

Newsom’s great-grandfather helped found the Bank of Italy, which became the Bank of America. His grandfather worked on Pat Brown’s campaign to become governor. His father is retired appeals court Judge William Newsom, who ran unsuccessfully for the board of supervisors in 1967. “I’ve been indoctrinated,” Newsom said. “Dyed in the wool liberal politics.”

He comes from a family that numbers 46 attorneys and would have become one himself after graduating from the University of Santa Clara if his father hadn’t pulled him aside and warned him off the path to law school. “I didn’t want to wreck him,” his father said with a laugh.

Instead Newsom spent a year as a property manager at a building owned by Walter Shorenstein, who is the city’s biggest single landlord, a major fund-raiser for the Democratic Party and a friend of the family. Newsom went into business for himself by starting an upscale wine store called PlumpJack. Investors include his father and his friend Bill Getty, fellow man-about-town and scion to the oil fortune.

The experience was also a lesson in local politics. Newsom had to fight off residents who complained that a purveyor of Pomerol would draw winos and hookers to the yuppie neighborhood. And the Health Department forced him to install a $2,700 mop sink in the carpeted store (which has been used since solely to water plants).

PlumpJack took off and Newsom found himself opening a restaurant of the same name down the street, which won raves from food critics. Newsom and his partners now have a Napa winery, a loft development underway south of Market, a hotel and restaurant at Squaw Valley, and are negotiating to snap up a major property in Hawaii.

“It’s timing, luck and passion,” he said. “It’s all-consuming; it’s my life.”

After hosting a fund-raiser for the mayor, Newsom found himself called by Brown and offered a spot on the Film Commission. As he was taking the oath, he discovered that the mercurial mayor had changed his mind and instead appointed him director of the Parking Commission.

Six months later he was a supervisor. Newsom--who whipped out his checkbook to pay for a $1,000 wheelchair ramp at City Hall when he found out that the disabled have been unable to get the authorities to install one for years--is already bristling over the fact that he had to recuse himself from voting on four issues in three weeks because of his business interests.

“Anything you actually know something about you can’t vote on,” he said. “The idea is to find something you know absolutely nothing about to vote on. It’s pathetic.”

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At the same time, Newsom has been criticized as too cautious and as a throwback to the days when white male businessmen didn’t even have to pretend to share power.

“Newsom has a pedigree,” said Jeff Sheehy, president of the Harvey Milk Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual Democratic Club, where the newest supervisor didn’t exactly wow the crowd on a recent visit. “He’s smart and charming and he’s working hard, but it’s obvious why he is where he is.

“You have to regret that he couldn’t answer specific questions,” he added. “He’s a fourth-generation San Franciscan. Doesn’t he know what’s going on in the city he lives in? If he can’t transcend that background and show that he understands what it’s like to wait 45 minutes for a bus then he’s not going to do well. I like Gavin, but he needs to have some positions.”

Newsom apologized the other evening in a church meeting room to the very vocal members of the Noe Valley Democratic Club for not having more concrete ideas, but insisted he was still studying the issues.

“I’ve been learning about politics,” he said, already sounding like a seasoned pol. “It’s worse than you think. It’s much worse. I think it’s worse because people make careers of it. I’ve got a career.” He nodded a lot as residents picked over the minutia of contentious issues such as the financing of a new football stadium and tenants’ rights. He promised he’s looking into the controversies and in the meantime said he wanted to make City Hall more “service oriented” and talked about increasing audits and starting departmental newsletters.

Newsom did take a stand on one issue: He will run for election in November.

“I’m going to do my best,” he said, “and if I can’t do it I’m going to come back here and sit with you and nail the next guy.”

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San Francisco, by the Numbers

Population: 723,000

Racial / Ethnic Breakdown*:

White, Non-Hispanic: 47%

Black, Non-Hispanic: 10%

Asian and Pacific Islander, Non-Hispanic: 29%

Native American, Non-Hispanic .4%

Hispanic, All Races: 13%

Sexual Orientation: There are no definitive statistics; estimates of the gay population have ranged from 10% to 20%

*Source: 1990 U.S. Census