George Christopher

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George Christopher (December 8, 1907 - September 14, 2000) was the 34th Mayor of San Francisco, serving in that office from January 1956 until January 1964. He was, as of 2007, the last Republican to be elected mayor of San Francisco; all San Francisco mayors since he left office have been Democrats.

Born George Christophes in Arcadia, Greece, the son of James Christophes and Mary Koines Christophes, Christopher and his family emigrated to the United States in 1910 and settled in San Francisco's South of Market Street neighborhood, then known as "Greektown", when Christopher was two years old. Christopher left day school at the age of fourteen when his father James died, and he became sole support of his family. He sold papers then talked his way into a job at the San Francisco Examiner as a copy boy. In 1935. he married Tula Sarantitus, daughter of a baker whom George did bookkeeping for.

After studying accounting in night school at Heald College [1], he worked for numerous small firms keeping their accounts and eventually bought out a small dairy on Fillmore Street, which became the Christopher Dairy. He was prosecuted in the 1940s for breaking the newly passed milk price-fixing laws.

Christopher began his political career in 1945 when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on re-election, he became board president. Christopher ran for Mayor in 1951 and lost to incumbent mayor Elmer Robinson, but was eventually elected mayor in November 1955, taking office the following January. He was re-elected in 1959 for a second term.

Christopher was instrumental in bringing the New York Giants baseball team to San Francisco in 1958 (where they became the San Francisco Giants) and in securing the funding to build Candlestick Park, which opened in 1960, for the team. His administration has been credited with the building of the Brooks Hall, twelve new schools, seventeen firehouses, six public swimming pools, the five story Fifth and Mission and the underground Civic Center garages.

He is known for his strong stand on civil rights, his childhood experience of anti-Greek sentiment informed his stand, he gained world-wide headlines offering his home to Willie Mays after it was reported that a Forest Hill realtor had refused to sell to Mays. Christopher also lobbied and succeeded in opening mental health and Alcoholic treatment centers under city funding.

He presided over the redevelopment of major portions of city and private lands, labeled Slums, some not without controversy; the Embarcadero Center and Golden Gateway, displacing the ancient Produce Market from the filled land southeast of Telegraph Hill to the Alemany location where it remains, Japantown and the Fillmore urban renewal that displaced the African-American and the remnants of the Jewish Community for concrete highrises, the new Hall of Justice and the opening of the Embarcadero Freeway, which blocked the Embarcadero and Ferry Building from the city, spawning the first Freeway Revolt.

In Christopher's second term, the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities held hearings in the City Hall supervisor's chambers. A large group of students and active citizens were fire-hosed down the marble steps inside City Hall rotunda by the SFPD when they protested their exclusion from admission to committee hearings. Christopher later told the Federal Government they were no longer welcome in city buildings, but he sided with the committee and endorsed the propaganda newsreel style film made by the committee about the event titled, "Operation Abolition", and blamed Communists. Christopher was criticized for endorsing the innaccurate portrayal of the so-called City Hall riot of May 13, 1960.

Perhaps Cristopher's most famous moment came when he hosted Nikita Khrushchev, on a tour of the states in 1959. They became friends and Christopher visited Khrushchev in the Soviet Union in March 1960.

He ran for lieutenant governor when Richard Nixon ran for governor, and U.S. Senate. He lost the 1966 Republican primary for Governor of California to Ronald Reagan.