Jones, unfortunately, could mobilize a bloc of 'progressive' votes with his leftist cult, then headquartered in San Francisco, and leftist politicians wooed him like a southern belle.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0521df.html
'Before the congregants of the Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones's deadly Kool-Aid, Harvey Milk and much of San Francisco’s ruling class had already figuratively imbibed. Milk occasionally spoke at Jones’s San Francisco - –based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted “volunteers” for Milk’s campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones’s criminal endeavors.
“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage. The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued: “Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.” John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown. This, the only remarkable episode in Milk’'s brief tenure on the San Francisco board of supervisors, is swept under the rug by his hagiographers.'
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jajceboy
13 years ago
Maybe. maybe not. Who knows?
But I think that he probably would. This was the late 70s, in San Francisco. Everyone slept around, so to speak.
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circus_mort
13 years ago
Willie Brown and John Burton continued to have successful political careers despite kissing up to Jones in the name of getting votes.
Milk could have risen in the political ranks. He could have held on to his seat as a supe and perhaps gone on to the House. I doubt he could have risen farther in politics than the House or perhaps one of the lesser California state offices.
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CaliCurmudgeon
13 years ago
Willie Brown and John Burton (and the rest of the sorry bunch who cozied up to Jim Jones) used Moscone and Milk as "martyrs" to the "progressive" (I puke) cause and deflected further attention away from their misdeeds.
I honestly think had Dan White kept his cool, he might have brought a lot of creepy SF politicians down.
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circus_mort
13 years ago
Willie Brown was the most hated Democratic politician in the state by Republicans while he was Speaker. He was very popular in the City, in some other parts of the Bay Area, and in certain circles in Los Angeles (mainly because L.A. politics makes S.F. politics look squeaky clean - I know this having lived in both the Bay Area and L.A.) but hated in much of the state. He turned out to be a very effective mayor, though. He's way too clever to have let Jones bring him down.
What surprises me is that Dianne Feinstein, who was White's closest ally on the Board of Supervisors, never took more heat for her ties to White.
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