The Assassination of Harvey Milk | The Hero | 4

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It's just before 11 a.m.

on November 27th, 1978.

In Mayor George Mosconi's private study, 32-year-old supervisor Dan White stands over the mayor's lifeless body.

Tucking his gun back into its holster, Dan moves quietly towards the doorway.

He takes a few deep breaths, then inches open the heavy wooden door, peering out into the main office.

The room, with its tall windows and elaborate decoration, is empty.

It seems no one hurt the gunshots.

Before leaving, Dan reloads his revolver with hollow point bullets, the kind that explode on impact for maximum damage.

After that, he goes back out the way he came, walking quickly and quietly through the reception room, down a wood-paneled corridor, and out of a discreet side door.

Once he's back in the main part of San Francisco's City Hall, Dan makes his way across to the other side of the building, where the offices of the supervisors are.

He needs to find Harvey Milk, preferably before anyone discovers that the mayor has been murdered.

A couple of people nod at Dan as he walks swiftly down the hallway.

One even tries to talk to him, telling him something about Dianne Feinstein.

Apparently, the president of the Board of Supervisors wants to speak with him, but Dan's not interested in what Dianne wants.

Even when he walks past her open office, Dan ignores Dianne as she calls out to him.

She sounds worried, like she's desperate to talk to him.

Well, Dan thinks, where was she when he was desperate?

A moment later, Dan barges into Harvey Milk's office, where the 48-year-old supervisor is chatting with a friend.

Not bothering with politeness, Dan interrupts the conversation to tell Harvey that he needs to speak with him in private, then inclines his head towards the hallway.

Harvey grins and follows Dan across the hall into Dan's own office.

Well, his former office now.

Dan's name has already been removed from the door.

It's stark in here.

Dan never bothered to decorate.

He doesn't have photos of his family, no paperwork on his desk, not even pens in his drawer.

But outside the window is a view of the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.

A lifelong opera lover, Harvey has always envied that view.

He said as much to Dan on occasion.

Harvey's just tearing his eyes away from the building across the street when Dan pulls his revolver out of its holster.

He points it at Harvey and pulls the trigger.

After the first shot hits his torso, Harvey holds up a hand as if to protect himself from more bullets.

But Dan doesn't stop.

He fires twice more, bringing Harvey slumping down onto the floor.

As Harvey's falling, Dan adjusts his aim and fires a fourth bullet into the back of Harvey's head, then another one for good measure.

Breathing steadily, Dan lowers his weapon.

He isn't sure what comes next.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

In November of 1977, Harvey Milk finally won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

He was the first openly gay man to win public office in California, and only the third openly gay elected official in the entire country.

He had a lot to celebrate.

Not only had he achieved his years-long goal, but he'd done it on the front page of the newspapers.

Before he was even sworn in, Harvey was a hero to his community.

But he wasn't the only new supervisor on the board.

Another freshman politician had made waves in the race for the city's 8th district, and on the surface, he couldn't be more different from Harvey if he tried.

Dan White campaigned on a platform of so-called family values and denounced the quote unquote deviants who were taking over the city.

As a former cop, Dan was backed by the police, while Harvey wanted to rein in the Vice Squad, which had a history of targeting the gay community.

Their victories in their home districts put these two men on a collision course.

Come January of 1978, they'd meet at City Hall and have to work together to run San Francisco, a town they both loved for very different reasons.

Unfortunately, only one of them would make it to the end of the year alive.

This is episode four in our five-part series on the assassination of Harvey Milk, the hero.

It's fall 1956 in Visitation Valley in San Francisco's southeastern corner, 22 years before the assassination of Harvey Milk.

Ten-year-old Dan White closes the front door of his family's bungalow, drops his school bag on the floor, and slowly hangs up his coat.

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

He's been crying and generally looks like a mess.

He stands in the entrance to the living room where his father Charlie is reading the paper.

Charlie looks up when he hears his son sniff.

Dan tells his dad that some kids just beat him up on the street outside, and Charlie waves him over.

It's time for a talk.

Charlie White isn't the kind of man to offer a hug and some gentle words of encouragement.

Instead, he's got instructions for his son.

He tells Dan that the next time bullies come at him, he has to fight back.

Getting hurt is no fun, he explains, but it's nothing compared to the humiliation of not standing up for yourself.

The next day, Dan comes home smiling and energized.

He proudly tells Charlie that he got the other kids to back off.

He came at them with such ferocity that they turned tail and ran.

Charlie chuckles and gives Dan a playful punch on the arm.

That's the way to do it, he says.

That's the way.

Dan White is just one of nine children being raised by Charlie and Nora White in their small house on Leland Avenue.

Their neighborhood has a bit of a small town vibe.

Mostly full of Italian, Spaniard, American and Irish immigrants like the Whites, the community is solidly working class.

Despite toiling hard, Visitation Valley locals typically earn less than their neighbors and other corners of San Francisco.

Charlie Whites, no exception to this.

He's a firefighter, so he puts his body on the line for his job, but still struggles to make ends meet.

On the weekends, he works as a contractor to help cover the grocery bill.

Eleven is a lot of mouths to feed, so there's not much time for nonsense or self-pity in the White household.

That's why Charlie tells his son to fight back when bullies corner him on the street.

The advice fosters a violent streak in Dan White.

He eventually earns a reputation at school for being a kid who likes to fight, and he's never short on opponents.

Dan takes after his father.

He's stubborn and argumentative, and he refuses to consider the opinions or beliefs of anyone but himself.

But that influential father-son relationship is cut short.

In 1963, Charlie dies when Dan's just 17.

Understandably, Dan's devastated, and his grades fall.

Ordinarily, the administrators at his Catholic school might look the other way for a bereaved student, but Dan's taking out his grief on other students.

He's getting more and more aggressive, and is eventually expelled for fighting.

He finishes his education at a local public school, and immediately starts looking around for what might come next.

He's an athletic sort, but not much of an academic, so college seems out of the question.

But thankfully, there's a place where a kid who's comfortable with violence is welcome.

In June 1965, Dan enlists to fight in Vietnam.

He trains as a paratrooper, and serves for several years before an honorable discharge brings him back to San Francisco in his early twenties.

Following his time in the army, Dan's at a loose end.

He doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life now.

He has vague dreams of becoming a writer, but never really makes an effort to follow through.

Luckily, where people like Dan come from, especially the Irish American ones, there's one pretty solid career path to follow.

Cop.

Aside from the decent paycheck the force offers, the job appeals to Dan for one big reason.

He sees the police as defenders of the virtuous, righteous warriors committed to making their community a safe place to live.

Though he's not the most devout Catholic, Dan thinks he's got a solid sense of right and wrong, and believes that by becoming an officer of the law, he can share his moral compass with the masses.

After his training is complete, Dan forks out $85 for his gun, a Smith & Wesson 38 revolver, and gets placed squarely into police life.

But to his surprise, he doesn't enjoy the job as much as he expected to.

At first, he's assigned to work as an undercover narcotics officer.

But it turns out, that's too morally gray for Dan.

As much as he wants to clean up the streets, he doesn't like the dishonesty of befriending someone with the specific goal of turning on them.

But even as a beat cop, Dan doesn't take much pleasure in the work.

He's reluctant to make arrests for minor crimes and seems more interested in helping people rather than punishing them.

Clearly, it's not a good fit, and after just 12 months in uniform, Dan quits the force.

Once again looking for some direction, he grows a beard and heads to Alaska, hoping that a change of scenery will bring him some clarity.

It doesn't, and before long, he's back in San Francisco, freshly shaven and handing in his application to rejoin the police force.

It's like he can't find his purpose, as if he knows the role society expects him to play, but can't quite make it work.

Well, he thinks maybe his second try will be better than the first.

Unfortunately for Dan, nothing's changed in the few months he was away.

His moral certitude just makes police work too difficult.

The gray areas of the job are too much for him to handle.

In 1973, Dan reaches his breaking point with the force.

After arriving to a bar fight to make some arrest, Dan reports a fellow officer for beating a man in handcuffs.

That doesn't win him any fans in his precinct.

You do not turn on your fellow cops, no matter what.

So, with plenty of his colleagues angry with him, he hangs up his hat for good.

Instead, he's going to follow in his father's footsteps and join the fire department.

He keeps his gun, though, just in case.

Dan begins two months of firefighter training in January of 1974, when he's 27 years old, and he quickly distinguishes himself among his cohorts.

He's selected as valedictorian, which means he has to give a speech at their graduation ceremony.

It feels like a sign to Dan.

He's finally moving in the right direction.

After that, his life starts coming together.

By the time he's 28, Dan's bought himself a metallic blue Porsche, has rented an apartment in a subdivision near Ocean Beach, right by the coast.

And he's filled it with all new furniture.

It's a big step up for a guy who just a year or two ago was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in an otherwise bare room.

Dan's life is coming together in other ways too.

He's always been an athlete and played football in high school, but working out for his job has helped hone his muscular physique.

Even though he eats junk food almost exclusively, he's got a cleft in his chin, green eyes and a thick head of chestnut hair.

All that to say, after several years of aimlessness, Dan White suddenly seems like a real catch.

In 1976, he marries schoolteacher Marianne Burns, who he met over a game of tennis with mutual friends.

They're a good match in many ways, both Catholic, both civic-minded, and both ready to settle down.

Marianne's father is even a firefighter at the same station as Dan.

To everyone around them, it seems like they're in for a quiet, idyllic life together.

And they might have had one.

They really might.

If it weren't for the state of Dan's old neighborhood.

His mom still lives in Visitation Valley on the opposite side of town.

And his fire station isn't far away, so Dan's in the area a lot.

What he sees there is disheartening.

He remembers it as the perfect place to grow up, but now it's transformed.

There seem to be bars on every window, grills on all the doors, violence has come to Vis Valley, and the SFPD seem powerless to combat it, all thanks to City Hall.

The city mayor, George Mosconi, has appointed a new police chief, who's put the kibosh on a lot of the department's more aggressive tactics.

Thanks to complaints from the city's minority groups, cops just don't have the free reign they once did.

And from Dan's perspective, Vis Valley is paying the price.

But crime isn't the only problem Dan sees.

Like plenty of other locals, he's noticed the entire city shift away from the blue collar professions that quite literally built it.

The industries that created San Francisco's middle class, that elevated thousands of immigrant families, aren't seeing the same benefits they used to.

Instead, the money's going to white collar types, tourism, and a growing downtown designed to attract corporations.

The paths that used to lead from high school to well-paying jobs aren't as robust anymore.

That means families in Viz Valley are struggling, and plenty of young people there are left aimless after graduation.

Church attendance is down.

The library branch is facing closure, and there are hardly any buses running through the valley.

And to add insult to injury, visitation has the highest percentage of homeownership in the city, which means the area is paying more in property taxes than any other part of San Francisco, but they're not seeing any of that flow back into the community.

Dan can see the problems facing Viz Valley, and he's not even living there.

And if he's frustrated, it's nothing compared to the way its residents feel.

It seems to them like they've been forgotten by their elected officials, like no one cares that their neighborhood is getting worse with every passing year.

But now they finally got the chance to change all that.

Until recently, supervisors were elected from a pool across the entire city, which means that there was no one communities like Viz Valley could turn to as a champion.

But in late 1976, San Francisco's voters decided to implement district races for future supervisor elections.

In the area around Vizitation, a full 56% of people voted in favor of the change.

They were desperate to finally have the representation they deserved.

And in the spring of 77, their hero steps forward.

Sick of seeing what's happened to his neighborhood, Dan White pays a visit to City Hall and files the paperwork to run for supervisor in the newly created District 8.

He couldn't make it as a cop, but he still wants to make his community a better, safer place.

Maybe now he'll be able to put things right as a politician.

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It's early evening in May 1977, in a community hall in Visitation Valley.

Hundreds of people are filing into the auditorium and finding seats.

At the front of the room, 30-year-old Dan White stands behind a lectern, giving the occasional wave when he sees friends in the crowd.

Eventually, every chair is full, with some people left to stand around the edges of the room.

At 7 p.m.

on the dot, Dan gives the microphone a quick tap and the chatter falls away.

There's a short smattering of applause when Dan introduces himself to the audience.

Then, he launches into a speech.

He's there to tell them why they should vote for him to be the supervisor of District 8.

Like most politicians, Dan makes promises that cover a wide range of issues.

But the thing he's most passionate about is the level of crime.

Not just in their district, but in all of San Francisco.

He's good at stirring up people's emotions, their pride in particular.

He says that their city has become a blight on the nation, named in the press as a cesspool of perversion.

That gets people riled up.

Not only has their neighborhood been forgotten by San Francisco's leaders, the entire city is an embarrassment.

Like John Briggs, the Republican Senator who wants to ban gay teachers from California schools, Dan's decided that finding a scapegoat for society's problems will propel him into office.

He wraps up his speech by calling people to action, telling them that it's up to them all to stand up and stare down their enemies.

Radicals, he calls them.

Incorrigibles.

Social deviants.

It doesn't take a genius to know who he's talking about.

San Francisco's growing gay community.

There are some 300 people in the auditorium the night that Dan White gives his first campaign speech, and he impresses a lot of them.

It's a full six months until the election, but he's already got people excited to cast their vote for him.

A homegrown boy who knows their streets, their schools and their troubles.

One of the people Dan particularly impresses is Goldie Judge.

Goldie's not a community leader in an official capacity, but she knows everyone, and everyone knows her.

She's always got the inside scoop on anything happening in Viz Valley, and is as happy to trade stories with the mayor as she is with a neighbor down the street.

She's also who Dan wants to run his campaign.

With her community connections and a finger firmly on San Francisco's political pulse, she'd be a great asset to his team.

When he first asked her to do the job a week ago, Goldie hedged.

She wasn't convinced Dan has what it takes.

Sure, he's handsome and charming enough, but she didn't really see passion in him.

To Goldie, instead of genuine excitement about his cause, Dan seemed to feel duty.

It's his job to fix the city because that's just the way it is.

And while duty is well and good for a soldier, a soldier has a mission, has orders to follow.

Without either of those, what would Dan do once he got into office?

Without a real passion to be a leader, would he burn out once the competition was over?

Goldie didn't know.

But after seeing him speak, she's convinced that he can inspire their community.

She'll help him figure the other stuff out.

300 people for the first meeting is a great start.

But with around 28,000 registered voters in the district, there's a long way to go.

Before anything else though, Dan has to actually move to district eight.

When he registered, he and his wife Marianne were living in district 10 out near Ocean Beach.

So the couple pack up their apartment and move in with Marianne's mother while they hunt for a place of their own in Viz Valley.

It doesn't take them long to settle in to the neighborhood.

After all, Dan grew up here, so it seems like everyone already knows him.

Or knows his siblings or his mother or remembers him being on the high school football team.

And even if they don't know Dan directly, everyone knows someone who does.

He's got name recognition built right in.

Still, having a lot of people be vaguely familiar with you or your family isn't enough to win an election.

So, every night after dinner, Dan and Mary Ann stop by five new houses.

They knock on the front door and introduce themselves to their neighbors.

It adds a personal touch to the campaign.

He's not some career politician out for himself.

He's a man of the people, a veteran, a former cop, a firefighter.

What more could anyone ask for?

Well, in this specific instance, it's Dan who's doing the asking.

Campaigning isn't cheap, and although he and Mary Ann both work full time, they can't bankroll the operation by themselves.

They loan the campaign three grand from their savings, but that's about their limit.

Thankfully, though, plenty of friends and family write them checks, and Dan's fire station buddies pass the hat to keep the cash flowing too.

Even local cops show up to help out at campaign headquarters, stuffing envelopes, making posters, and generally just doing whatever they can to get a former cop into office.

A lot of this makes Goldie uncomfortable.

She's Dan's campaign manager, but she feels increasingly in the dark about a lot of what's going on.

She doesn't quite understand why the police are so invested in getting Dan onto the board of supervisors, or where all the money's coming from.

She tries to shake off her worries, but it's not the only issue she has with Dan.

She's noticed that her guy doesn't seem like he's got a firm grasp on all the issues he's talking about.

Whenever Goldie asks Dan questions about policies, Mary Ann's the one who writes down answers for her husband.

The more time Goldie invests in the campaign, the more she worries she's backing a guy who's little more than a pretty face with a vacant expression.

Despite what his campaign manager thinks, Dan White knows he's more than an empty suit.

He's a hero, and he's got the pedigree to prove it.

When Dan was still a boy, his father Charlie made headlines by rescuing a minister's son from a suicide attempt up on Twin Peaks.

On August 4th, 1977, just a few months into his campaign, Dan gets the chance to perform a daring rescue of his own.

It's in the early hours of the morning when the call comes into Dan's station.

There's a fire at Geneva Towers, a high-rise apartment complex overlooking Viz Valley.

Dan and his colleagues race to the scene of the blaze, where they can see smoke billowing out of the apartments near the top floors.

There's a woman standing on the balcony screaming for help.

Dan and another fireman head 17 floors up to find the burning apartment.

He and his colleague break down the door and rush inside.

They pull the woman out along with her baby and get them outside to safety while their teammates put out the flames.

A few hours later, Dan's back home, his body still buzzing with adrenaline.

Not just from the danger, but from the excitement of what this will do for his campaign.

He can't wait to tell Goldie and picks up the phone at 5 a.m.

While she struggles to stay awake, Dan gives her a play by play of the rescue and starts insisting they get the story in the morning issues of the papers.

He's a hero, he says, everyone should know it.

Though Dan can't see her, Goldie just shakes her head.

Today's papers will have gone to print hours ago, she says.

They'll just have to wait.

But she promises they can talk about setting up an interview or issuing a press release at a more reasonable hour.

By the time Goldie's walking to the campaign office a few hours later, though, the story's already out.

But it's not in the papers.

Someones typed the whole thing up like it's a news article and stapled copies of it to telephone polls all through Viz Valley.

At the office, Dan denies having written the flyers, though it's not clear who else would have, or indeed who else could have.

But whoever's behind the unauthorized press release, it has the intended effect.

The San Francisco Chronicle sends a reporter out to interview Dan, and runs the rescue in the next day's issue.

That's the last straw for Goldie Judge.

It's clear that Dan doesn't trust her to do what's best, and she definitely doesn't trust him, so she's done.

She resigns the day after the article appears in the Chronicle.

But Dan doesn't let losing Goldie slow him down.

In fact, he's about to get wind of a development that will supercharge his campaign right through to election day.

Since 1932, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd have been running a school for wayward girls on the grounds of their convent in the Portola neighborhood, which is on the north end of Visitation Valley.

Young women who've committed relatively minor infractions have been housed at the school, where the Sisters have done their best to return them to the straight and narrow.

But recently, things have gotten harder for the nuns.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd are finding themselves spending more and more time fundraising just to keep the lights on.

It can't last.

Not too long ago, a group of mental health professionals in city agencies came to the Sisters with a proposal.

They want to buy the convent and turn it into a professional facility for teenagers who need specialized mental health care, but can't get it at home.

Sister Columba, the mother superior, likes the idea.

It would carry on the convent's tradition of charity towards young people, just with government funding and professionals better equipped to deal with difficult cases.

Dan White does not like the idea, though.

Very few people in Viz Valley do, in fact.

And as word of the proposed youth facility spreads throughout the community, it stirs up plenty of anger.

Pretty soon, people are actively campaigning against the plan, circulating inflammatory rhetoric about the kinds of criminals that will supposedly take the sisters' place in Portola.

Desperate to become a leading voice on the issue, Dan pays a visit to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd with a plan of his own.

He tells them that if he's elected, he'll help them turn the school into a home for elderly people.

But Sister Columba turns him down flat.

Children are their vocation, she says.

And someone has to look after them.

No deal.

Dan doesn't like hearing no.

He never has.

Doesn't Sister Columba see that he's the hero of Viz Valley?

After that meeting, Dan decides that the Sisters of the Good Shepherd are his enemies.

Now, a lot of people might think picking a fight with nuns isn't the best campaign move, but Dan's not afraid to make the feud public.

At a community forum, Sister Columba stands up to speak, and when she's done, Dan fixes her with an irate glare and tells the room that the Mother Superior is lying to them.

When another nun tries to speak up for Sister Columba, Dan gives her a dressing down for daring to attend a town meeting when she's only lived in Viz Valley for three years.

The nuns aren't the only people Dan has a problem with.

As the campaign nears the pointy end, he gets aggressive with anyone who doesn't support him.

He's right, they're wrong, and there's no way around it.

Just like his father, when a man heckles him in a candidate's night, Dan announces to the room, I know who my enemies are, and I'm not going to forget.

It's bold behavior for a first time candidate, and had Dan not started his campaign so early, it might have cost him.

But by the time he's snarling at nuns and swearing vengeance on his opponents, he's got all the momentum he needs.

In November of 1977, Dan White cruises to victory in District 8.

He's going to City Hall.

But the day after the election, it's not the golden boy of this valley who makes the front page of the newspapers.

It's the guy from six miles up the road in the Castro, the new supervisor from District 5.

Dan got the win he wanted, but it's Harvey Milk who'll get the coronation.

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It's just before 10 a.m.

on January 9th, 1978.

47-year-old Harvey Milk stands outside his camera store on Castro Street.

Around him are more than a hundred friends and supporters, all of them excited for this historic morning.

In an hour, Harvey will be sworn in as the first supervisor for San Francisco's new District 5.

But like most other things in his life, Harvey wants to make the event a spectacle.

He's invited the people of the community to walk with him the 15 blocks to City Hall, and he's made sure the media knew about his stunt in advance.

So, when he arrives at the ceremony at the head of the march, there are plenty of journalists waiting to report on the moment.

Looking into the cameras, Harvey announces, this is a walk that will give to many people hope.

He also makes sure to introduce his young partner, 24-year-old Jack Lyra, to the journalists.

This is his lover, he says, his partner in life.

It's an overt reminder that Harvey is different from most other politicians San Francisco's seen in the past.

In fact, the incoming board of supervisors is the most diverse one ever and includes the first elected Chinese American supervisor, the first black supervisor, the first single mother and a Latino.

It's the dawn of a new day.

It turns out that after spending about four straight years campaigning, Harvey's pretty good at being a politician.

Early on, he sits down with Mayor Moscone to lay his cards on the table.

Confident in his sway with the gay community, Harvey issues an ultimatum.

Work with me to advance the rights of gay people in the city, or I'll work against you in the next mayoral election.

It's a no-brainer for Moscone.

The gay vote is already important in San Francisco and will only get stronger in the coming years.

He agrees to Harvey's terms, and tells him that he's not going to deal with the old guard of the city's gay politicos anymore.

If anyone has an issue concerning the gay community, Moscone is going to direct them right to Harvey Milk.

So, by the end of his first month in office, Harvey's become Moscone's strongest ally on the board of supervisors.

And, with the help of his new political connections, he gets right to work improving things for his district.

He ups street sweeping of Castro Street from weekly to daily, stops the Castro Library branch from closing, and stops the board from closing a Castro grade school.

He also gets 50 new stop signs installed in his district, and tells his aides to give priority to anyone complaining about potholes.

Not only are they a nuisance, but they're an issue voters will remember come election time.

He stays in his office late, reading the city charter to make sure he knows the ins and outs of his position, how city hall works, and who has what power.

In other words, Harvey's off to a great start.

Someone who's having less of a good time though, is Dan White.

But to be fair, he started off with some upsetting news.

All through his campaign, Dan had ignored the people telling him that he was going to struggle to support himself on a supervisor's salary, which is just $800 a month.

That would be less than $4,000 in 2024 before tax.

It's not a lot to get by on in a major city, not when Dan's wife Mary is expecting their first child any day now.

Dan had expected he could keep his full-time job as a fireman, which brings in around $18,000 a year.

But the top brass told him he wasn't allowed to do both.

And as much as Dan enjoyed being on the SFFD, he felt duty-bound to serve his district.

The money's not the only thing Dan's struggling with, though.

He's also finding it hard to work with some of his colleagues.

You see, he's an idealist, and believes that the government will work best if everyone gets to work on issues important to them.

So when Harvey is left off of the choice committees, Dan goes to board President Dianne Feinstein to advocate for him.

Now Dianne's not Harvey's biggest fan, but she can see that Dan's passionate about the board getting along and bettering the city.

So she puts her personal feelings aside and gives Harvey the assignment he wants, because of Dan.

But in return for his generosity, Dan feels slighted by some of his new colleagues.

He knows that Harvey and Supervisor Carol Silver, another progressive, laugh at him behind his back.

He knows they roll their eyes at him, and he feels betrayed when they vote against him, as they usually do.

Still, he tries to make it work as best he can.

He finds the politics exhausting.

All the deals and compromises to win votes from the rest of the board.

But after a little while, he figures he's got the hang of things.

He even backs Harvey's Pet Initiative, a gay rights ordinance that offers protections against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation.

It's the same kind of bill that when it was repealed in Florida, kicked off the culture war over gay people in America just a year ago.

When the ordinance looks like it's going to be held up in a committee day in chairs, he throws his weight behind the bill and sends it through to the next step.

The move seems to fly in the face of Dan's own campaign rhetoric, deriding the quote unquote cesspool of perversion overtaking the city.

But it's a decision he makes with good reason.

Dan expects that in exchange for helping push through the gay rights ordinance, Harvey will vote with him on his key issue, the proposed mental health campus for teens in Portola.

Dan had coasted to victory in part because of his promise to stop the facility from opening in his district.

Now, he's sure he has a 6 to 5 majority poised to vote with him, which will be a major win.

The vote happens March 13, 1978, just days after Dan did his part for Harvey.

And it happens in front of a hall full of Dan's constituents, who show up to see their supervisor fulfill his promise, but instead they see him humiliated.

Harvey votes in favor of the youth campus.

He's always said that the underrepresented have a voice in him, and that includes young people.

So the controversial facility gets the OK from the board of supervisors, much to the fury of Dan White.

After that, Dan's done playing nice.

Harvey Milk has made him a failure.

Determined to get his revenge, he tries to recall Harvey's Gay Rights Ordinance to his committee.

But he's blocked by his colleagues.

The rest of the board votes to approve the bill.

Dan's the only one to vote against it.

This bill, he says, at the signing of the ordinance into law, lets a man and address be a teacher.

His statement might seem oddly specific, but it reflects the political landscape of California in 1978.

There are still several months until the state votes on Proposition 6, which would ban gay people from being teachers.

Senator John Briggs first announced the ballot measure a year ago, and the debate is still raging.

Briggs has succeeded in igniting a conversation about the fitness of gay men and women to be allowed around children, and is happily playing his role as outraged do-gooder.

The campaign has brought Senator Briggs a lot of attention, which is exactly what he wants.

He's running for governor, after all.

But the debate over the ballot measure is also boosting the prominence of Harvey Milk.

He emerges as Briggs' loudest opponent, the de facto spokesperson for the gay community.

Harvey's obviously horrified by Prop 6, but he also knows that being so visible in the fight to stop it is doing wonders for his political career.

He's sure to have a much easier time when he's up for re-election, and it might even give him a shot at a run for board president.

But Harvey's rising star also makes him a target.

In June of 1978, Harvey's scheduled to speak at the city's annual Gay Freedom Day Parade, an event which usually attracts hundreds of thousands of participants and viewers.

Just days before the event, he receives a postcard in the mail.

It's not the first threatening letter Harvey's gotten, and it won't be the last.

But something about it feels more serious.

Somehow, all the intense debate the Briggs Initiative has stirred up has a lot of gay people on edge.

It suddenly feels like instead of just being outcasts, they're targets of genuine hate.

This postcard is a stark reminder of the stakes of Harvey's fight.

The neatly typed message is simple.

You get the first bullet the minute you stand at the microphone.

From Airship, this is episode 4 in our series on the Assassination of Harvey Milk.

On the next episode, Dan White makes a decision that will change the political landscape of San Francisco forever.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are Double Play by Mike Weiss, The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Schiltz, and Harvey Milk, His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details.

And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all of our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Christian Peraga, sound design by Matthew Filler, music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.