I’ve come to believe that Gavin Newsom isn’t full of shit. He’s earnest about striving to serve for good purposes and he is super smart. I no longer hold his hereditary privilege and random good looks against him.
Hopefully some of this will resonate, and maybe it will help some parts of the broad coalition that forms the American political left from seeking to cannibalize other parts, but, hey, that’s a longer topic for another day.
I first learned his name when he was a San Francisco Supervisor, in the go-go ’90s, when life in the city was booming due to the rise of tech and all the ancillary businesses that helped serve the employees. I knew him to be the kind of good looking that was popular then, seemingly without effort. He palled around with the controversial (iconic and lovely) political powerhouse of the era, Willie Brown.
Most notably to my crowd, he (and others) owned a nightclub in the Marina district that was modern, LED-lighted, crowded, filled with dressed up people thinking they were cool, with interesting furniture that reminded me of modern architecture. The crowd was a bit young for me, the music off, the whole scene was trying too hard; by association, I was turned off to Newsom.
When he ran for Mayor, I wasn’t upset or against him. He ran against an energetic Deputy Public Defender. I saw him campaigning outside of my maildrop (used for my law practice) and up close I saw the layers of makeup. He was always camera-ready. I voted for the public defender guy.
So, then Gavin won, which was fine but not exciting. We thought of him as corporate, superficial, and that he would turn out as most SF Mayors do: to be a disappointment. I knew this about local politics. We are difficult bunch to please. We are not homogenous. We do not all like our mayor at the same time. Usually we have one-term mayors here.
But. Then. I saw Gavin Newsom on the streets of Hunters Point talking to residents, and listening, and trying to figure out how to help the economic conditions that made living there so dangerous. He was boots on the ground showing up. He made this a common occurrence. I stopped keeping track but I remember he surprised me in a good way.
Yes and then Gavin did something that changed the course of American history. It’s so fundamental that I believe the generation of people born after 2000 have no understanding that life used to be different. It’s like when people tell me that black and white people couldn’t get married (what? but what about Donna’s parents, I’d protest, thinking of my elementary school friend in Queens), or when people tell me that women used to not be able to vote. My former lack of rights is literally incomprehensible. To me.
It must be like that for the kids with gay marriage. I remember, before Gavin did his thing, my bestie from college “married” the love of his life, in a big beautiful wedding with family and nearly 100 friends, and their offspring, in attendance. We all could not stop balling, the ceremony was so beautiful. It was not illegal however it was not legally binding; this had nothing to do with its impact. I remember watching the kids. About a dozen or more, ages 6 to 16, lining staircase watching the ceremony in the standing-room only room below. All to celebrate their uncles getting married, yay, love was so grand! Not a one really appreciated the significance of the ability to have the party in an open manner. No one saw or thought a thing out of place. Only love, that day, on their faces, every single one. (We all cried harder at that.)
So, yeah, Gavin made that real. He made it legal first. That’s what all the fuss was about. To recount, for the younger ones:
The Mayor of San Francisco one day read the United States Constitution, and the California Constitution, and he didn’t find anything saying we needed to treat gay men or lesbian women differently from straight men and women. The government gave rights and privileges to married people (both locally and at the federal level) and Gavin decided that nothing excluded gay people from that right. So, to be fair (knowing that fundamental fairness is what the due process clauses in the US and California Constitutions are all about, after all), Gavin just decided as chief executive in California, to order the SF city clerk to issue licenses to any couple, regardless of sex (which we would now call gender). It was done to make other law applied to married people fair to all.
The reason I know all this is that Gavin explained his policy all over the interview-media, as it existed at the time. Mostly, I caught him on late night talk shows. He explained his logic. I’ve read the Constitution. I’m a lawyer. I was impressed with his method of thinking through the issue and the way that he represented San Francisco on the national stage, as he made his media appearances.
I felt proud. Of him. Of my city. Of our values.
To complete the circle: That wasn’t the end of the gay marriage debate, as those who understand our concentric circles of federalism will immediately figure out. Newsom could only marry people in SF. It was a fun few months and then the lawsuits started. The California Supreme Court ultimately upheld the acts of Newsom, and then the California ultra-conservatives (yes, there were some here, and sometimes they even held power) got a gay-marriage-banning proposition on the ballot and it passed! It was awful. Suddenly some marriages were illegitimate or illegal or invalid, maybe, and then other states started legally marrying gay people. Iowa? Massachusetts? So two huge legal giants, the lawyers who opposed each in other the Bush v. Gore in fact, banded together to bring a federal court case challenging the California proposition – and they put on a really great factual showing at the trial court level of how being gay-married hurts no person at all on earth period the end. They won the case, appeals followed, and the right to be married as a gay person was finally established through upholding that trial court challenge to the proposition designed to overturn the excellent public policy started by Gavin Newsom when he was Mayor twenty-years ago.
So.
Fuck people who hate on Gavin Newsom. He is preternaturally beautiful, it’s ridiculous, but please let us not hold appearances against him.
Yes, also, he has and will make mistakes. That’s what trying looks like. This many decades later, Gavin is still at it, still being Gavin, still trying to expand the bounds of due process, equal protection, and democracy.
Originally, the House of Representatives had an approximately equal number of constituents in each district. Years ago, the allocation of Representatives changed and States with more people got fewer Representatives per capita. This happened to California, and thus, our political power in Washington grew disproportionately slower than our population. Also, we drew our districts to resemble shapes known in nature, largely, and that gave a larger number of Republican per capita than the State might otherwise elect. We were happy to live with that – but in light of Texas’s gerrymandering (a word that has become synonymous with fucking around with), Newsom is trying something to fight back.
Now is not the time to worry about Newsom, chronicle his foibles, or act as if we are voting for President. Newsom has a strategy. He’s got a track record with me, I trust this plan, and I for one am hopping on board with a smile.
Deadheads for Democracy 