Silver, Carol Ruth: Moscone and pro tem mayors

Carol Ruth Silver: George Moscone was a hunk. He was tall and slender. He had this gorgeous hair. He was charming, had a great smile, and a great cheery demeanor. He’d shake your hand or give you a hug. He was really a charmer. And he was everywhere. As mayor, he really enjoyed going to the continual spate of parties, lunches, dinners. Everybody wanted George to come and be at their event, and he enjoyed doing that. He would often take me, Harvey, or some of the other supervisors who were part of his team with him to some kind of event, and he would studiously introduce them, and make sure that the labor guys knew that this was his candidate for District 9, and this was his candidate for District 8, and this was his candidate for District 6. So it was a pleasure to be on the same team with George Moscone. When he went out of town, which he did with fair frequency – he had to go to Sacramento or here or there – one of the things that he did was appoint members of the Board of Supervisors as the pro tem mayor. That meant that Harvey Milk became the first gay mayor of San Francisco for some day during George’s term, and I had a chance to be mayor. Everybody had a chance to be the mayor. And what did that mean? That meant that you got a limousine, a big, fat, black car that was being driven by a police officer to ride around in for the day and you went out to see your constituents. You took your constituents out for a ride. You had a good time, particularly Harvey. I was more subdued I guess, but Harvey, when it was his turn to be mayor, would fill the limousine with a bunch of people from the Castro and they’d go tooling around and saying, “I’m the mayor today.