Taylor, Barbara: Judging Moscone's legacy

Barbara Taylor

Abstract

Barbara Taylor: If you're talking about the days after Dan White's resignation that led up to the assassination of George Moscone, that was a terrible time in the city's history. And I personally think that it's really wrong, a mistake to take away anything, in terms of making a judgment about what kind of a person George Moscone was. I think that was entirely irrelevant that, you know, he has to be looked at in terms of his long political career, his personal life, what kind of a husband he was, what kind of a friend he was, and you know, what kind of a politician he was at City Hall. And what happened to him was so totally unexpected and, you know, no reasonable person would ever expect something like that. And in fact after working at City Hall as many years as I have, I look at what occurred during that meeting that George Moscone had with Dan White whatever happened, whatever was said, and it's something that, in fact, happens around City Hall all the time. Not maybe every day of the week, but it happens frequently where politicians say one thing and do something else or intimate that they're going to do one thing and then do something else. That is not unusual, that's politics. And if anything, I think it says something—It says more about Dan White, that he would put whatever interpretation he did on whatever words were said and then draw a conclusion from that. Because anyone who is politically astute, and knows the way City Hall politics works, knows that people change their mind. They say one thing, they do something else. And you just take a couple weeks ago, we have a new mayor, Ed Lee. He is the mayor because one member of the Board of Supervisors, at the last minute, did something that he said he wasn't going to do. He voted for Ed Lee instead of Michael Hennessey. It happens. You know, so I just, I'm getting a bit off touch, but I just think it's such a bad thing to try to draw any conclusions about mayor Moscone’s character from that incident. You know, you just have to look at a much, much larger picture.

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Type

Interview

Date Original

2011-02-16

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Information

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