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approach from the outset toward Obama’s failure to promptly repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) and to take legal action against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Their success not only advanced the movement but greatly helped President Obama politically.

      FOCUS ON RESULTS, NOT PROMISES

      I witnessed firsthand the damaging consequences of going easy on progressive Officials during Art Agnos’s tenure as mayor of San Francisco. Agnos ran for mayor in 1987 as a self-identified progressive. His eagerness to wear this label, coupled with his excellent record as a state legislator, brought him broad support among social change constituencies. Activists saw the race as their big chance to win City Hall after enduring nearly ten years under Dianne Feinstein, a centrist who had failed to identify herself with any of the powerful movements—gay liberation, anti-development/neighborhood preservation, or rent control—sweeping San Francisco during the 1980s. There was a general feeling that the city had undergone great changes but the person in charge hadn’t grown with it. By 1987 the gay community had built its own political organization and wanted a mayor who would support “domestic partners” legislation and appoint more gays and lesbians to city commissions. Anti-development forces, which had won a critical battle to restrict high-rise development through a 1986 ballot measure, wanted a mayor who would appoint a Planning Commission favoring the preservation and development of affordable housing. Rent-control activists particularly felt the need for a new mayor. The key issue on their agenda—the imposition of rent control on vacant units—had twice passed the Board of Supervisors, only to be vetoed by Mayor Feinstein. Rent-control advocates felt it essential to elect a mayor committed to signing a vacancy control law; Agnos’s promise to do just that gave him the nearly unanimous support of tenant groups.

      Agnos and his tacticians created a grassroots campaign organization unprecedented in the city’s history. The campaign included more than five hundred precinct leaders, many of them motivated primarily by the candidate’s support for stronger rent control. I was extremely enthusiastic about Agnos; my wife and I spent most of our nonworking time contacting voters for the campaign. My own interest centered on Agnos’s commitment to enact a new homeless policy, his personal interest in improving the Tenderloin, and his support of various measures to preserve and expand low-cost housing. I never had great expectations that Agnos would back strong vacancy control legislation, but I believed political factors would force him to sign whatever measure his tenant supporters passed through the Board of Supervisors.

      Agnos was elected with a staggering 70 percent of the vote. Rentcontrol activists should have had no problem quickly cashing in. However, they violated the fundamental rule of dealing with elected Officials: demand results.

      Soon after taking office, Agnos met with rent-control activists to discuss a strategy for enacting vacancy control. After establishing a clear tone of friendship, Agnos explained that he had promised real estate industry representatives that he would at least “sit down with them” prior to moving forward with vacancy control. He requested that tenants meet with landlords in his presence to see if a “win-win” compromise on vacancy control could be reached. Agnos emphasized his continued support for rent control but felt he must first attempt to mediate a settlement.

      Rent-control activists expressed virtually no protest against Agnos’s plan. A few pointed out that dialogue with landlords on the issue had already been tried and had failed, and others argued against wasting time on such a charade. Nobody asked Agnos why he never expressed a desire to mediate between landlords and tenants during a campaign in which he consistently identified tenants as his allies. Neither did anyone question his sudden concern for a constituency that had actively worked against his election and funded his chief opponent.

      Why did rent-control activists meekly accept Agnos’s waffling on the chief issue on their political agenda? Because Agnos’s carefully crafted campaign identity as a friend of tenant interests overshadowed postelection reality. This led tenant activists to accept as good-faith action a clear betrayal of their constituency. Agnos had done nothing as mayor to demonstrate his pro-tenant stance; he had merely created personal relationships with leading rent-control activists during the campaign, which became “proof” of his support for tenant interests. The consensus among rent-control activists was that Agnos was “our” mayor, whom “we” had elected. Denying Agnos the political space he claimed to need, it was argued, would be the height of arrogance and eventually could turn him against tenants. Having felt left out for more than a decade, rent-control activists did not want to jeopardize their new access to power by fighting over what seemed nothing more than a procedural delay. A course was thus established whereby Agnos would have no reason to fear the tenant constituency. As a result, for the balance of his term he afforded tenants and their chief agenda item no respect.

      Agnos’s “procedural delay” was only the first of many clever strategies he used to brush aside vacancy control while steadfastly proclaiming his commitment to it. After several months spent in pointless meetings with landlords, Agnos was forced to admit the failure of the “mediation process.” He then announced a new justification for his failure to enact vacancy control: lack of votes on the Board of Supervisors. This excuse had superficial validity during Agnos’s first year in office, but by 1989 the newly elected Board of Supervisors could have passed vacancy control if Agnos had made it a priority. But the reputedly pro-tenant Mayor Agnos did not.

      Agnos’s lack of commitment to passing vacancy control became clearer in 1989 when he showed the kind of fight he could put up for a goal he really wanted. This involved his all-out effort to pass a November ballot initiative for a new stadium for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. To achieve a goal that he had never backed in his mayoral campaign and that his core neighborhood supporters opposed, Agnos used every political chit at his disposal. He had gay and lesbian leaders announce that the stadium would (somehow) increase funding for AIDS services; he got the Sierra Club to support the proposed stadium as good for the environment; and he made political deals with various supervisors in exchange for their backing. Despite all this, the stadium initiative failed.

      Meanwhile, Agnos still had not lifted a finger to help the passage of vacancy control. I was not alone among tenant activists in recognizing the discrepancy between Agnos’s vigorous work on the stadium initiative and his lack of effort on vacancy control. Despite their recognition of Agnos’s inaction, however, leading rent-control activists continued to view him as committed to their cause. Had these activists evaluated the mayor’s actual accomplishments in the same way they would evaluate the performance, say, of any consumer product, they would have concluded that Agnos was, on his own, never going to produce on vacancy control. Nevertheless, as long as the mayor remained publicly committed to the proposal, rent-control leaders continued to identify him as tenants’ friend.

      The November 1990 election offered a prime opportunity for vacancy control advocates. With a governor’s race, high-profile statewide environmental and consumer initiatives, and strong local candidates from the gay and lesbian community, the election promised to attract an unusually high progressive-voter turnout. But Agnos, and hence rent-control advocates, ignored this special opportunity to submit vacancy control to the voters, instead working to elect a clear pro– vacancy control majority on the Board of Supervisors. When this majority was achieved, vacancy control was finally enacted in 1991 (with Agnos’s approval). Almost immediately, however, the measure became subject—as advocates had always predicted it would—to a landlord-sponsored referendum on the November 1991 ballot. After the landlords qualified the referendum for the ballot, Agnos held a meeting with rent-control activists. He observed that, fortunately, the referendum would appear on the same ballot on which he sought reelection; therefore, his campaign could also fund the pro–vacancy control effort. I was not alone in recognizing the true import of the mayor’s statement: he had intentionally delayed vacancy control so as to assure a high tenant turnout for his reelection bid.

      Ironically, Agnos’s secret strategy resulted in both his and vacancy control’s defeat. The real estate interests Agnos had tried so hard to placate in 1988 poured more than $1 million into defeating vacancy control. When other mayoral candidates who supported vacancy control unexpectedly entered the race, Agnos compounded his betrayal of tenants by playing down the issue and failing to provide the funding he had promised. The result: lacking both money and any grassroots campaign,

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