From Fear to Fearless:

Tom Ammiano, state assemblyman from San Francisco, frank in his homosexuality and even more frank in his leftist pursuits, quite possibly the most genuine outlier to ever serve in the California Legislature.

The Liberation of Tom Ammiano

They were gathered on a summer California to those nationwide. His State (he does standup, by the way) if day in Sacramento in one of those research had found that Three Strikes not for his ability, time and again, to august hearing rooms on the first floor had absolutely nothing to do with any get laws passed that actually change of the old Capitol, each one playing a downturn in crime. We were just as people’s lives. part all too familiar by now. safe—or just as imperiled—with or Think of the gadfly who speaks at There was the father testifying without it. every city council meeting, an irritant once again about the daughter And then there was the politician that the powerful suffer for a maximum murdered more than twenty years in the middle, a wispy looking man of three minutes so they can go home ago by a repeat felon fresh on the almost lost in his chino suit, whose believing that democracy actually streets, the crime that had led to the calm presence chairing the hearing occurs. In the case of Ammiano, the Three Strikes law. There was the did nothing to call attention to itself, irritant, after so many years occupying well-dressed lobbyist advocating for unless of course you count the tiny the fringe, has become the powerful a tough-on-crime approach, waiting jewel that sparkled from his left ear or without losing his gadfly creds. Map to tell the legislative committee that the peculiar dialect—Italian queen, the political landscape of California, its Three Strikes was the best deterrent he calls it—straight (or not so straight) divides and undulations, and locate the we could hope for. If it occasionally from the Jersey Shore. That would be Democrats and their super majority went too far and banished non-violent Tom Ammiano, state assemblyman along the Southern California coast offenders to life in prison, that was a from San Francisco, frank in his and big cities and the Republicans small price to pay for our safety—and homosexuality and even more frank taking cover in their beleaguered you better believe that we were safer in his leftist pursuits, quite possibly outposts in the hinterlands and then because of the law. the most genuine outlier to ever serve jump across the Bay Bridge and land There was the Stanford professor in the California Legislature. He in the loophole that is San Francisco. who had actually studied the data might be considered a mere comedic To the left of everyone else, even and compared the crime rates in sideshow to the affairs of the Golden fellow San Franciscan and ultra-liberal State Sen. Mark Leno, you’ll find lesbians from working in California’s responded by taking his measures Tom Ammiano representing the 17th public schools. Ammiano teamed to the ballot. It was Ammiano who District, his own nimble party of one. up with Milk and Hank Wilson and cajoled San Francisco to become Critics reaching for an adjective mobilized the “No On 6” opposition the first city in the nation to require to contain him decide that Socialist under the banner “Come out! Come businesses to provide universal health isn’t good enough. Only Marxist out! Wherever you are.” Such was the care for employees and their families, will do. But even they marvel at his initiative’s sound defeat that it even including domestic partners. effectiveness as a lawmaker, how he’s lost in Briggs’ own backyard. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger been able to operate so defiantly in School board trustees made the made the mistake in 2009. He showed corridors of power that almost always mistake a decade later. That’s when up at a Democratic fundraiser at the compel a politician to water down Ammiano won a seat on the board Fairmont Hotel only to meet the ire of his or her beliefs. If Harvey Milk was and then became president. Soon, Ammiano, who called his appearance a pioneer by dint of being the first a “cheap publicity stunt.” As Willie homosexual ever elected to public Brown introduced Schwarzenegger office in the U.S., then Ammiano to the crowd, Ammiano marched is the successor who doesn’t simply out, telling the governor to “kiss my carry the torch but actually gets the gay ass.” Four days later, the governor hard work done. vetoed Ammiano’s simple financing Pick up the New York Times on bill for the port of San Francisco, a summer day in 2012 and turn to a measure that had passed the the editorial page and find the paper- legislature without a single “No” vote. of-record lauding Ammiano for his In a memo to Ammiano boldness as the author of the “Trust explaining the veto, Schwarzenegger Act”—the legislation that seeks to halt Pick up the New York Times on left a message that could be gleaned the deportation of undocumented a summer day in 2012 and turn by reading the first letter of each immigrants jailed for traffic violations to the editorial page and find the sentence down the page: “I F--- You.” and other minor offenses. “It deserves paper-of-record lauding Ammiano A patient man, Ammiano waited until to become law,” the Times opines. for his boldness as the author of Arnold left office and then basked in So write off Ammiano—and the the “Trust Act” —the legislation the glow of Gov. Brown’s signature on beauty is he lets you pretend that you that seeks to halt the deportation his bill to finance tens of millions of can—at your own risk. of undocumented immigrants dollars in improvements to the port— The superintendent of San jailed for traffic violations and just in time for the 2013 World Cup Francisco Unified School District other minor offenses. yacht race. Schwarzenegger would made the mistake in 1975. Ammiano later recount the incident in his was teaching elementary school in the memoir, “Total Recall,” confirming Mission District when he became the thanks to his efforts, the curriculum that his veto was sweet payback for first gay teacher to publicly emerge for every student in San Francisco Ammiano’s cheeky behavior. from the closet, organizing the nation’s Unified included issues surrounding “I’ve never been interested in first-ever Gay Teachers Caucus. It was gays and lesbians. standing in the middle,” the seventy- Ammiano who led the movement to Willie Brown made the mistake in one-year-old Ammiano explains. include gays in the school district’s the 1990s. As mayor of San Francisco, “Sure it’s comfortable, but life’s too anti-discrimination policy. he packed the board of supervisors short for the middle. Of course, in John Briggs, the anti-gay rights with loyalists, writing off Supervisor California, our middle isn’t like the legislator from Orange County, made Ammiano as one of the “pantywaists.” rest of America’s middle. Our center the mistake in 1977. His Proposition Ammiano’s retort to Brown was classic is ahead of their center. But it’s still 6 initiative, inspired by Anita Bryant’s Ammiano. “It’s Mr. Pantywaist to the center. We have plenty of good “Save Our Children” campaign you.” If Brown took special glee in liberals in Sacramento, but sometimes in Florida, sought to ban gays and vetoing Ammiano’s bills, Ammiano they don’t act on their beliefs. They see the real estate lobby or the tough- sauce,” Ammiano said. Her hair was If he was different in a theatrical on-crime lobby, and some of them snow white and she wore granny way, no one cared to give a name to lose their courage. glasses and clunky black shoes, and it. When you dress up in high heels “So progressive issues move in a she would sing at the drop of a hat, and women’s clothes and do a little glacial way toward the squishy middle. he recalls. She came from Naples pantomime of a striptease, and the That’s a place that drives me crazy. and taught herself English, though family loves it, what do you ask? When I like being on the edge. It comes she never lost the Italian spicing. She you speak with the squeaky voice natural to me. I’m an old queer and a lived to be 100, and her presence nature has given you and your hips leftie who’s got nothing left to fear.” anchored his life. “We needed her,” do the meanest mambo on the block, The free flight of Tom Ammiano, he said. “Because there was a lot of who do you ask? When there’s an older his liberation from home and blue turbulence under the surface.” cousin in the family who’s gay and collar ethnic roots, is a story less Questions of identity—old world/ your brother and sisters gab about him about embracing sexual identity over dinner—your ears pick up “light than about surmounting fear. It in the loafers” and your eyes catch starts with the fear of parents whose their limp-handed mock—how do you third child is born in the wake of ever tell them, “That’s me?” the bombing of Pearl Harbor and As happens in childhood, identity is raised in Montclair, New Jersey, played out in make believe—games a town split between upper and of cowboys and Indians in which he lower with upper boasting the most was always the cowboy. He recalls millionaires in the Garden State and the vague dream of moving to Texas lower meaning you lived across the one day and hooking up with another street from an enormous trolley barn cowboy, but who knew what that where the gears squealed through meant? “I was very skinny, and I never the night. That Tommy is a different sat still. Today, they’d have diagnosed boy becomes apparent soon enough me as ADD. Back then, my mother to his father, Guiseppe, a taxi driver The free flight of Tom explained to people that I was ‘high who calls himself Joe, and his mother, Ammiano, his liberation strung.’ I was a little queen. When I Vincenzia, known as Susie, who from home and blue performed, they were an appreciative serves cafeteria food to workers at the collar ethnic roots, is a audience. I was indulged that way local telephone company. story less about embracing rather than ridiculed. It helped too There’s shame in the simple fact sexual identity than about that I was the smart one. That gave that any mother in the 1940s has surmounting fear. the family something to focus on to work at all. And there’s shame in other than my girlish behavior. ‘Well, the knowledge that their turn-of-the- boy, can he read.’’’ century Victorian doesn’t belong to new world, rich/ poor, believer/ Parochial school would have them but to his mother’s parents. unbeliever, gay/straight—got been cruel enough for someone so His grandparents, parents, brother sublimated in a weird way, he said. different, but Ammiano bore the and two sisters cram into the skinny Most of the family attended Catholic added shame of having to wear a split-level house on the town’s busiest school and everyone married an patch over his eye—a black circle— intersection, where Tommy’s earliest Italian, but piety and language already to keep his vision from crossing. In memories are of two invisible forces were being shed. His mother talked every way, he stood out. “I weighed competing for domain—the smell and talked about being driven to the forty two pounds. I was weird and of his grandma Mary’s all-day sauce “poor house”—there was such a place looked different and didn’t get rid of simmering on the stove and the smell back then—but they had plenty to that damn patch for four years. I got of fumes wafting in from the Texaco eat, and every so often she’d sneak bullied and rabbit punched by the gas station next door. him home an illicit slice of coconut jocks and a few of the teachers, too. “Thank goodness for Grandma’s pie from work. What was I going to say? ‘They’re beating me up because they think I’m like $400 a year. Enough to pay after twenty years—the questions gay?’ tuition and books at Seton Hall. surrounding him only grew with his “If you don’t have the bulk to land “Stupid of me, but Seton Hall was death. a good punch, you develop another all men. There was all this energy, “The tragedy of my father’s life is way. My other way was the same way and guys you got interested in, but that he suffered in a kind of silence. my parents dealt with their lot in life. it could never go anywhere. Even I’m not Dr. Phil, but he probably Humor. Biting humor. So I turned worse, the school wasn’t for me. I internalized all that shame. Not being most everything into a joke, and wanted to get far away from home, able to provide for his family in the sometimes I turned the joke on my and it was way too ‘New Jersey’ for way he wanted to provide, all the classmates. I got very good at it.” me. Guys with thicker accents than obstacles put in his way by the new Getting through required a me bringing switch blades to class. world. He had a great sense of humor great show of restraint as well. He It felt like the Blackboard Jungle. I and irony, but it wasn’t enough in the told himself he could never reveal face of all those struggles.” his true feelings. The one time he The family couldn’t cover the did, it backfired in such a way that funeral costs, and his mother and older it marked him for years. “We were brother went down to the taxi company in elementary school, and it was and made a stink. No use. There Valentine’s Day. The rule was girls were no benefits, no retirement, no gave valentines to boys and boys health coverage, no burial insurance, gave valentines to girls. Well, I wrote no nothing, to draw on. Frank Cody’s valentines to Frank Cody and some of father owned the local funeral home the other boys. The nun was so upset and let the Ammianos place a ledger that she made fun of me and then near the casket. In Italian, they call it, ripped up my cards in front of the ‘La Boost.’ The ledger of debts. Friends whole class. and family signed it and assumed a “I was terrified by what I had just “If you don’t have the bulk portion of the debt for the funeral and done. So I did the worst thing I could to land a good punch, you burial. do as a kid. I ran out of class. I ran develop another way. My His mother, dressed each day in to our church across the street and other way was the same way her white cafeteria worker’s outfit with starting lighting candles. You were my parents dealt with their the flowery handkerchief, soldiered supposed to give a penny for every lot in life. Humor. Biting on. To this day, Ammiano keeps her candle you lit. Well I didn’t give a humor. So I turned most metallic gold Bell employee’s card penny, and I lit up every candle they everything into a joke. engraved with her picture. He credits had. I got in deep trouble with the her with giving him his combative nuns and my parents. But the way I spirit, never wielding her hard luck as thought about it was I needed to light flunked out of English and changed guilt to keep him forever close to her all those candles because I needed to majors to Communication Arts. I in New Jersey. be protected.” cruised through and then made my In the summer of 1961, he He somehow found a path to plan to get the hell out.” became a counselor at a camp in the survive high school, even becoming His dad, only fifty-seven, died Catskills for the handicapped and that pals with the same Frank Cody, a star before his graduation. Blood pressure led to a job at an Easter Seal camp jock. He knew he wanted to be the up, no money to see a doctor, he the next summer—all the way out first in the family to attend college, collapsed of a stroke. If his father in California. He took a Greyhound but the finances were bleak. He heard remained a mystery to his youngest bus for three and a half days until it the parish had a scholarship fund son—never at home, consumed reached Stevens Creek Canyon Road and decided to apply. “I took the test, with starting a union at the Brown past Cupertino. and it was the first great thing that and White Taxi Co., finally working “It was California in the 1960s, happened to me. I won it. Something his way from driver to dispatcher and I got introduced to California girls and boys and the disabled, here.’ So I climbed up a ladder in the limited English skills. The principal, and they thought I was the most roof and got into an empty water tank. who lived in the gated community exotic little thing around,” he said. I spent the night there with a gecko. of St. Francis Woods and wouldn’t “California became a refuge for me. Thank goodness, they were gone allow notes home in Spanish, I stayed with friends in Berkeley. I the next morning. A U.S. helicopter immediately singled out Ammiano was totally imbued with what was landed in a field across the road and as a “troublemaker.” Surely he was. happening at the free speech area. that was my cue. I climbed aboard His hair ran past his shoulders and he Mario Savio and then the Kennedy and took off.” refused to cut it, and he was making assassination. Everyone was expressing He left Vietnam for good in noise about union issues. himself, unless of course you were a October 1968, traveled through Asia, “This is where it began for fag. Not even among the lefties was it Europe and Amsterdam and then flew me. We were fighting for bilingual cool to be out.” home to New Jersey, where his uncle education and against IQ tests. I By 1965, he had earned his didn’t think it was right that kids were master’s degree in special education being classified as retarded because from San Francisco State. Feeling of a language issue. And the larger guilty about his deferment from issue was how kids of color were the draft for reasons of “asthma,” he getting the short end of the stick in decided to serve in Vietnam anyway— education. So I started working with not as a soldier but as a volunteer ethnic minorities. Some of them were with a Quaker-founded organization suspicious at first because I was gay teaching English to Vietnamese high and of course I was white. school students. He stayed for nearly “But I stuck with it, and then I two years, traveling from city to farm, moved to the Buena Vista school lending support to families in a way nearby. We had a principal named that the teaching program surely Jimenez and seven or eight really would have frowned on, had it known. And the larger issue was how good, young teachers. We tried In a country where his build— kids of color were getting different things, and the school board small, lean, lithe—allowed him the short end of the stick in hated us because we were challenging to blend in, he no longer was at a education. So I started working the conventions.” physical disadvantage. He learned with ethnic minorities. Some At some point it occurred to to get right in people’s faces. Taking of them were suspicious at first Ammiano that here he was agitating on police oppression, he secreted because I was gay and of course for all these civil rights issues, and no messages inside Vietnamese jails on I was white. one was uttering a word about the behalf of women whose husbands need to defend gays and lesbians who had been unjustly arrested. During were living in closeted fear, unable to the U.S. offensive known as TET, greeted him with a warm embrace tell even their own families, much less he got caught in the wrong stretch at the airport. “We’re proud of you, the world, who they were. He became of countryside. American B52s were Tommy.” He knew for sure now that active in the Harvey Milk Club and dropping so many bombs to the north San Francisco was the place where the Bay Area Gay Liberation, an he could hear the earth vibrate and he would carve out the rest of his life; organization that lasted barely a year see the red of the tracer bullets paint teaching kids with handicaps would but took on issues that no other group the sky. Masses of refugees were be his life’s work. would, such as discrimination inside herding to and fro, and Communist He landed in the Mission the LGBT community and how gay North Vietnamese troops began going District at a public school called nightclubs were closing their doors to door to door looking for the enemy. Hawthorne, where many of the blacks and women. “Bang, bang, bang on the metal K-third grade kids came from poor Ammiano knew he couldn’t gate. Villagers said I needed to hide. and immigrant families and were very well spearhead a movement if ‘Mr. Tom, it’s no longer safe for you designated “retarded” because of their he, himself, remained in the closet. So he came out in 1975 in the most In the wake of the murders, his name around town. Entering the public way—on the front page of the Ammiano began to believe that a 1990 race as a favorite, Ammiano won San Francisco Examiner. His was gay candidate from San Francisco’s in resounding style. the profile of a teacher “Gay, gifted, eastside could gain enough broad A fiscal crisis loomed in San yet closeted.” With fellow teacher support to win a seat on the school Francisco Unified, and Ammiano Hank Wilson, he formed the Gay board. It was a leap into politics, sure, fought to avoid teacher layoffs. First Teachers Caucus that same year, but it was a natural step for someone as board vice president and then demanding that sexual orientation who had known since childhood the as president, he pushed the school be included in the school district’s struggles of those mired at the bottom. district on issues related to gay “no discrimination” employment And what had all that hollering on the youths, including AIDS education clause. They signed up thirty or so frontlines of education reform been if and condom give-aways. Before long, gay and lesbian teachers, but when not a launching pad for public service? he had ushered in gay and lesbian it came time to tell the public about sensitivity curriculum for all students. their issues, only three of them— In 1994, a seat opened up Ammiano, Wilson and Ron Lanza— on the Board of Supervisors, and stood up to be counted. Ammiano saw it as a chance to take “I didn’t even know how to hold a the progressive cause to a bigger stage. press conference,” Ammiano later told Five days before the election, as the the Examiner. “I had to… ask how campaign soared, his partner Curbo to do it. Even some gay people didn’t succumbed to AIDS. A grieving think it was a good idea.” Ammiano won by an easy margin and Ammiano was clever enough to poured himself into the job. Early on, trot out a group of parents, teachers he came to believe that Willie Brown’s and the principal eager to testify about years in Sacramento, his overreliance his good work in the classroom. As on back room deal making, was serving the caucus and its supporters grew, Ammiano knew he couldn’t him poorly as mayor. At City Hall, they began picketing outside school very well spearhead a slick politics meant nothing if you board meetings. It didn’t take long movement if he, himself, couldn’t deliver services on the streets. for the mostly conservative trustees to remained in the closet. So It didn’t help, he said, that Brown’s add homosexuality to the district’s “no he came out in 1975 in ego wouldn’t allow him to see the discrimination” policy. Ammiano’s first the most public way—on supervisors as partners with their own political victory had been notched. the front page of the San contributions to offer. In the backlash to the rising of Francisco Examiner. As supervisor seats became vacant, gay rights came the shots that felled Brown appointed one loyalist after Supervisor Milk and Mayor George the other until there were only three Moscone in 1978. Ammiano had not He knew enough about himself to seats occupied by independent voices. only lost a mentor in Milk but a dear understand that no seat on the inside “It was good that his appointees were friend. Still in shock, he sang at the would ever change his sensibilities as people of color, but bad that they memorial service as part of the Gay an outsider. That was ingrained. What were in lockstep with him,” Ammiano Men’s Chorus. There, he met Tim Ammiano didn’t fully appreciate, at said. “His administration just didn’t Curbo, a fellow teacher who had least at first, is the hard work needed have a populist feel to it. I started come to California from Waco, Texas to win an election, even one for the challenging him on transparency of seeking his own refuge. school board. His 1980 run never political consultants and other issues, “Remember that kid in New Jersey caught wind, and he got trounced. He and he kept vetoing my bills.” who said he was going to ride off to tried again in 1988, spent only $12 It then struck Ammiano that Texas and meet a cowboy someday. and this time collected a respectable, “San Francisco is a very populist Well, he did. Tim and I were partners if still shy, 57,000 votes. Stand up city,” and maybe the trick was to take for the next seventeen years.” comedy, his night gig, helped spread these issues straight to the people. So that’s what he did, persuading fellow cited the complexity of governing San sights on something truly vanguard, board members to go along. They Francisco. “I’m supporting Brown, but turning San Francisco into the first went around Brown and put issue I’m having great emotional conflict,” city in the U.S. to offer universal after issue on the ballot. A measure to Rivaldo told The Chronicle. “Being health insurance for every resident, establish an independent watchdog an advocate, legislator and activist including domestic partners. As overseeing the abuses of the police. is one thing. But administering a Ammiano shaped it, the Healthy A measure to change the elections of $4 billion enterprise like the city is San Francisco plan would require all supervisors from citywide to district, another.” businesses in the city with more than which Ammiano saw as a way to Tim Colen, president of the twenty employees to either provide reduce the influence of wealthy Greater West Portal Neighborhood health insurance or pay into a city- developers and other moneyed Assn., echoed the sentiment in The operated health fund or contribute to interests, giving the power to people Examiner. “He’s a sweet and decent a health savings account. in their own backyards. The plan would offer preventive “One by one, the measures found care for residents not eligible for their way to the ballot, and the people Medicare of Medi-Cal, regardless of won,” Ammiano said. “It was a mini pre-existing conditions or immigration revolution. And Willie Brown was status. The annual cost of Healthy very unhappy.” San Francisco would be split between Receiving the highest number of the city (about $100 million) and votes in his own election, Supervisor local businesses (about $80 million.) Ammiano took the mantle of That Ammiano was able to push president of the board. No longer through the effort during the last part could he be called the outsider. If of his last term made it even more there was ever a time to be co-opted a capstone. It was signed into law by by the agenda of the middle, it was “I’m not one of those to sit back Mayor Gavin Newsom on August 7, now. But Ammiano went right on and think about legacy, but 2006. Today, the plan serves more hurling potshots from the perimeter. it’s hard not to look at what we than 55,000 San Franciscans, about That’s where he worked best. That’s accomplished on the board of two-thirds of all uninsured residents in where he felt the safest. When you supervisors and not be satisfied. the city. become a politician at the age of fifty, We changed the landscape. For “I’m not one of those to sit back he explains, it’s a lot easier to forever domestic partners, for police and think about legacy,” Ammiano be who you are. reform, for district elections, for says. “But it’s hard not to look at what In 1999, at the last hour, he threw Healthy San Francisco.” we accomplished on the board of his hat into the mayoral ring, so late, supervisors and not be satisfied. We in fact, that he could qualify only changed the landscape. For domestic as a write-in candidate. To no one’s guy, but he scares the bejesus out of partners, for police reform, for district surprise, he won more than 49,000 people on the west side. He doesn’t elections, for Healthy San Francisco.” votes and the right to face Willie seem like the kind of guy who could What made the reforms especially Brown in a runoff. Suddenly, the sit down and talk to landlords and satisfying was how they would change prospect that Tom Ammiano could business. It would be like…the the possibilities for his own daughter, actually become the mayor of San People’s Republic of San Francisco.” Annie, whose presence in his life had Francisco appeared frightening to The election wasn’t as close come as a true surprise. Back in the some. as Ammiano had hoped, but he 1970s, he had donated his sperm to an In advance of the election, did galvanize progressive voters anonymous lesbian couple. A decade even longtime friends and admirers throughout the city, making way later, at Annie’s urging, they decided voiced reservations. Jim Rivaldo, a for a new and more liberal board of to track down her father. Ammiano political consultant who had run supervisors. jokes that they were looking for a way campaigns for Milk and Harry Britt, Entering his last term, he set his to explain her overbite and defiance. “She had a strong personality midst, who could be an easier target safe places to learn, and they do not that her mothers couldn’t explain,” than a kid who sang Mozart in the have to fear for their safety because of he said with perfect comedic timing. shower? For years, Seth had been who they are.” “You know. You see an attribute you bullied relentlessly in the local “I can’t bring my son back,” don’t like, and it can’t be you. So schools. Teachers and principals Walsh said. “But we have made a who can you blame? Well they found mostly ignored the pleas of his difference today to protect young me. Little Tommy Ammiano, sperm mother, Wendy, to do something to people across our state just like Seth donor. The one with the sympathetic lessen her son’s misery. He hanged who are or are thought to be lesbian, nervous system that never stops. The himself from a tree in the backyard. gay, bisexual or transgender.” one with the smart mouth.” Ammiano authored A.B. 9, Seth’s Ammiano sent sixteen bills to the Coincidentally, Annie was Law, detailing the acts that constitute governor’s desk in 2012 and watched growing up in the Mission District bullying, including the gay hazing thirteen of them signed into law. Not not far from his house, attending one bad for the resident Marxist. Whether of the very schools where he once pushing legislation that recognizes the taught. “Connecting with her was a agenda of many (legalizing marijuana) momentous day, one of the greatest or the agenda of a few (media access to in my life,” he said. They forged a inmates in state prison), the sensibility friendship and then a father-daughter is pure Ammiano. When the ACLU bond that grew deeper yet with the honored him as the “legislator of birth of his granddaughter. the year” in 2011, it underscored his In 2008, as then Assemblyman willingness to wage fights that other Leno termed out in the State legislators, even the most liberal ones, Assembly, Ammiano jumped into write off as doomed. the void of the 13th District (now the As he approaches a last term in 17th), a seat tailor made for him. He Ammiano authored A.B. 9, the Assembly, it may be that none won in lopsided fashion, receiving Seth’s Law, detailing the of his causes is more quixotic than more than eighty four percent of the acts that constitute bullying, his challenge to the tough-on-crime vote. If residents were half expecting including the gay hazing Seth orthodoxy. Even in California, the a change in approach to accompany was made to suffer. The law “lock ‘em up” faithful can be an his change in office, Ammiano requires schools to adopt a impossible wall to chip away at. And let them know right off they were formal process to receive and yet there was Ammiano last summer, mistaken. True to form, he set about investigate bullying complaints chairing the Assembly’s public safety drafting state laws that required local from students and parents. committee, pick in hand, taking aim governments to offer not piecemeal at the Three Strikes law. help for at-risk youth but an umbrella How had it come to be that more of social, mental health and health Seth was made to suffer. The law than three thousand of the inmates services. requires schools to adopt a formal serving life sentences under Three When he learned about the process to receive and investigate Strikes were convicted of crimes suicide in 2010 of thirteen-year-old bullying complaints from students such as stealing a pair of pants from Seth Walsh, a small, sensitive kid and parents. Teachers and other a department store? Wasn’t the law who happened to be growing up gay staff who witness acts of hazing intended—indeed sold to California in the hard, little mountain town of and intimidation are compelled to voters in 1994—as a way to get killers, Tehachapi, Ammiano naturally saw intervene. rapists and child molesters off the something of his own childhood. In As Gov. Brown signed the bill streets? a community where many are fond into law on Oct. 17, 2011, Ammiano If one case had come to convey of their guns and right wing radio, thanked Wendy Walsh for her tireless the tragic overreach of the law, it was though less enthusiastic about the advocacy. “We are showing students the Kafkaesque tale of Dale Curtis maximum-security prison in their throughout California that schools are Gaines, a 55-year-old inmate who suffers from mental retardation and big boxes. Perhaps the same electorate accused of traffic violations and other schizophrenia, serving a life sentence that recently passed Proposition 30, minor crimes. It would no longer for receiving stolen property. Never the sales tax increase to raise revenue allow local jails to hold immigrants had Gaines committed a violent for schools, is ready for a law that beyond their bail or sentencing crime; his first two strikes were closes loopholes in Prop. 13, allowing terms and turn them over to federal daytime burglaries of empty houses the state to modestly increase the tax immigration authorities. without the use of a firearm. He took burden on commercial property. “Our local police should be mere trinkets. “Prop. 13 is not the untouchable enforcing local criminal laws, Ammiano listened respectfully as third rail anymore. It’s more like the not acting as extensions of ICE,” Mike Reynolds, the Fresno wedding bad guy with the mustache who has Ammiano said. “Under federal photographer who wrote the Three tied California to the rails with a fiscal law, we’ve had 85,000 Californians Strikes initiative onto the ballot, made train wreck coming,” Ammiano says. deported since 2009. Many of them his case against reform. His 18-year-old were never convicted or charged with daughter, Kimber, had been shot dead a serious crime. It’s gotten so crazy in 1992 by a parolee trying to steal her that a victim of domestic violence purse. He was grayer and balder but who happens to be undocumented his voice no less insistent. “Crime has can’t report her abuse to police dramatically dropped in the 20 years without the threat of being deported.” since the law’s passage,” he said. “It’s Friends and foe wonder what cut crime in half, simply put.” Ammiano will do as an encore once Next was the lobbyist for Crime his time in the state legislature runs Victims United. Reforming Three out. It’s doubtful he’ll retire. It’s Strikes—even to save a nonviolent doubtful he’ll find his way into the offender from a life sentence—was a business world. It’s doubtful a non- fool’s endeavor that would imperil us profit could contain his energy, much all, she said. Ammiano let her finish less his politics. Maybe he’ll return to and then in a voice barely above a real comedy. Maybe he’ll run again whisper began to speak. The question Before he terms out in for mayor. When asked the question, he posed wasn’t about Dale Curtis 2014, Ammiano would like the stand-up goes into deadpan mode: Gaines or any of the other extreme nothing better than to reform “Not sure… Outside of politics, ‘old applications of the law. Rather, Proposition 13, which has queer and leftie’ is not a resume that Ammiano took the line of a fiscal its own stranglehold on will get you very far.”❖ conservative, wondering if only a California, he says modest narrowing of the law might ease prison overcrowding and save a struggling California some money. “Corporations want to be treated as A few months later, the citizens people when it suits them, but when of California, asking themselves the it comes to paying their fair share of same question, voted to reform Three taxes, they’re looking for a deal that Strikes. The edifice now had a chip. real people can’t get.” Before he terms out in 2014, And then there’s Ammiano’s Ammiano would like nothing better continued pledge to undocumented than to reform Proposition 13, which workers, his authorship of the Trust has its own stranglehold on California, Act that passed both the Assembly and he says. It’s one thing to stop the Senate in 2012, only to be vetoed by state from raising property taxes on Gov. Brown. The measure, which he residents and another to extend such plans on re-introducing, would place an exemption to shopping malls and curbs on the detention of immigrants