Tom Ammiano
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Tom Ammiano (born December 15, 1941), a Democrat, is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
He represents District 9, encompassing parts of the Mission District and the Bernal Heights and Portola neighborhoods. He was elected to the city-wide Board in 1994, and re-elected in 1998, when he became Board President. His efforts to have the Board elected by district instead of city-wide succeeded, and, running as a resident of Bernal Heights, he was elected to the new Board in 2000 and 2004.
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Ammiano will be ineligible to be re-elected in November 2008, since he will have served two consecutive four-year terms. In August 2006, he announced his intention to run for the 13th District seat in the California State Assembly in 2008. The seat is being vacated by openly gay Assemblyman Mark Leno, who has already endorsed Ammiano and will chair his campaign committee. [1]
Among his accomplishments on the Board of Supervisors is the creation of the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance, which was passed by a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors and signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom on August 7, 2006. This makes San Francisco the first city in the nation to provide universal healthcare access. [2] [3] [4] Ammiano is also the main architect of the city's Domestic Partners Ordinance, which provides equal benefits to employees and their unmarried domestic partners. It also requires companies that do business with the City and County of San Francisco to provide the same benefits.
Ammiano grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. He received a bachelor's degree in communications from Seton Hall University in 1963 and a master's degree in special education from San Francisco State University in 1965. He taught English to children in South Vietnam as part of a Quaker program until 1968, when he left shortly after the Tet Offensive.
Ammiano is a former public school teacher. In 1975, he became the first gay public school teacher in San Francisco to make his sexual orientation a matter of public knowledge when the Board of Education voted against including sexual orientation in the district's nondiscrimination clause; a year later the Board reversed its stand. In 1977 he fought the so-called Briggs Initiative, which would have prevented gays and lesbians from teaching in California's public schools. In 1980 and 1988, he ran for the San Francisco Board of Education, and was elected in 1990. He was subsequently elected its vice-president in 1991, and then president in 1992.
Tom Ammiano, as president of the Board of Education, was successful in his efforts to include a gay and lesbian sensitivity curriculum for all students in the San Francisco Unified School District. As President of the Board of Education he helped to make the San Francisco Public Schools District sexual education curriculum the most diverse and inclusive in the United States. In the San Francisco Public schools sexual diversity training begins in kindergarten.
In 1999, As president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Ammiano came into conflict with San Franciso's Catholic community when, at his urging, the Board granted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a transvestite performance group that mocks the Catholic Church, a permit to close a block of Castro Street for a street party on Easter Sunday. Said Roman Catholic Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy, "While we are offended by what they do, we're simply asking 'Please don't do it on Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian year.'" An Archdiocese newspaper compared the Sisters' activities to neo-Nazis celebrating on the Jewish holiday of Passover.[1][2] Ammiano's actions may have hurt his mayoral election bid among San Francisco Catholics.
In the San Francisco mayoral race of 1999, Ammiano mounted a successful write-in campaign in the November election, preventing the incumbent Willie Brown from achieving a victory without a run-off. While he lost that second election in December, Ammiano's campaign galvanized progressive voters in San Francisco and had a major impact on the composition of the new, more liberal Board of Supervisors the next year. Ammiano ran for mayor again in 2003, but did not win enough votes to make that run-off after Superversior Matt Gonzalez entered the race, splitting the progressive vote.
Aside from his teaching and political activities, Tom Ammiano has been a stand-up comedian since 1980. Sometimes called "The Mother of Gay Comedy," he hosted open-mike comedy at the Valencia Rose cabaret in San Francisco which featured, but was not limited to, lesbian and gay male comedians. He played himself in the Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.
Ammiano was in a 16-year domestic partnership with a fellow schoolteacher, Tim Curbo, who died of complications from AIDS in 1994. He has one daughter and is now a grandfather.
[edit] Further reading
- Kevin Fagan and John Wildermuth. "Ammiano's Long Road From Jersey Kid to Mayoral Candidate," San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 1999.
- Erin McCormick. "Ammiano's career as an 'inside outsider,'" San Francisco Examiner, December 7, 1999.
[edit] References
- ^ Editors (March 29, 1999) "Supervisors’ vote: Reactions varied, passionate and in large numbers." Catholic San Francisco.
- ^ Editors (April 10, 1999) "Mock Nuns Hold Easter Party Despite Protests." Catholic World News.
[edit] External links
- San Francisco City Government profile page
- Campaign Without Precedent: Tom Ammiano's Run for San Francisco Mayor
- Tom Ammiano for Mayor of San Francisco!
| San Francisco Board of Supervisors |  |
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| McGoldrick • Alioto-Pier • Peskin • Jew • Mirkarimi • Daly • Elsbernd • Dufty • Ammiano • Maxwell • Sandoval |
