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9/96

It is my observation that when a a grass roots activist from a minority community takes the leap into mainstream politics by running for elected office, the event marks a new level of political credibility for that minority group. Which is a long-winded way of saying that with Maddy Hirshfield's emergence as a viable candidate for Sonoma County's fifth district supervisor, the local lesbian/gay/bisexual/etc. community has come out of the political closet.

This is. as far as I know, the first time an openly gay or lesbian (or bisexual/etc.) candidate has made a serious bid for office in the county. Closeted queers running for office do not count, all they do is confirm the suspicion that gay is not OK.

The exciting thing about Maddy's candidacy, aside from the fact that she is an honest, intelligent, compassionate, politically savvy human being, who also happens to be a woman, is that she only represents the tip of the iceberg. Carrying her identity as a lesbian into the arena, she makes of herself a visible marker of just how far the queer community has come in this county in eight short years. Besides being a damned good candidate in her own right, she is a symbol of all the organizing and political foundation laying that hundreds of others, generally less visible activists have done since the community began seriously organizing itself after helping to defeat the LaRouche initiative in 1986.

I always thought that magi Fedorka, the Santa Rosa dynamo who spearheaded the first county-wide lesbian and gay organization, "Forward Together," would be the one to make the break into mainstream politics. But, after years of tireless effort, she seems to have put politics on the back burner and settled into blissful domesticity with her true love.

So, along comes Maddy Hirshfield, former co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club, member of the county's Human Rights Commission and the Democratic Central Committee, political columnist for We the People, west Sebastopol resident, and a a physical therapist in private practice. As you can see from this snap-shot resume, she has done her political homework, too, participating in many of the lesbian/gay organizations that have emerged since 1987. She even portrayed a dyke of dubious character in the first play produced by Tibad, the local lesbian theater company.

Still, the political importance of Maddy's candidacy extends beyond her own affinity group. To paraphrase Georgia Prescott, a long-time lesbian activist and executive director of the Sonoma County Council on Aging, Maddy's candidacy is paving the way for other minority activists to take the electoral plunge. A few other minority members have run for office in the county, most recently Barnabe Hernandez, and some have succeeded, but they are not exactly lining up in droves. And they are not getting the kind of support they need from the white, middle class, hetero majority.

A strong showing from Maddy, whether she wins or loses, could encourage other gays, lesbians, Latinos/Latinas, African Americans, Native-Americans, etc. to run for political office. And they could have a profound influence on making local politics more sensitive to the genuine needs and concerns of the county's residents, especially if they remain true to the unique wisdom they bring with them as minority people.

It should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that the county government is not paying attention to the voice of the people in many respects, and a lot of people are not willing to take it any more. A lot of people don't want to see their county hospital leased to the highest bidder, or all their sewage systems linked together in a way they find environmentally unsound. People are looking for solutions to problems that take into account the real needs and desires of the people who actually live her—all of the people—not just the rich white business owners.

So, while one one hand, Maddy Hirshfield is just a nice white middle class woman who would like to be supervisor, as a open lesbian she carries with her the dreams of many others who are like her only in that they have never seen people like themselves making the decisions that effect their lives in this county. And they think it's about time that they did.