By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2000
PHOTOGRAPHS by the Los Angeles Times
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s not quite 7 a.m. on a sleepy Saturday–a time when most American mayors are still home in bed–but the people’s court, Willie Brown-style, is about to come to order.
Arriving at City Hall in his stylish homburg hat and $3,500 Brioni suit, the slightly built man known to most San Franciscans as simply “Da Mayor” will spend the next five hours employing his decisive brand of political problem solving to tackle the concerns, complaints and flights of fancy of some two dozen constituents.
There’s the homeless mother of three who tearfully tells Brown the city “spends more on outreach for drug addicts than it does on babies” and the woman claiming she was attacked by a fellow patient at a city counseling center. There’s the cabby with an idea to cut the long wait for taxis in town, the fidgety man who’s writing a screenplay with roles for both the mayor and President Clinton, and the frustrated carpenter whose repeat requests for a city job interview have gone unheeded.
America’s most unabashed politician has an answer for them all.
“Sometimes,” he tells the carpenter, “your name falls through the cracks because the system is not perfect. But that’s about to change. It’s going to change right this very minute.”
No other big city mayor does it quite this way. Since launching his once-a-month Open Door sessions at the start of his first term in 1996, Brown has met with thousands of strangers, parceling out favors, offering advice and accepting pointers.
Serving his second and last term, the 66-year-old mayor insists he’s in no need of any campaign-style grandstanding or public relations gimmick. The meetings, he says, are a simple grass-roots tool, “cutting through the bureaucracy that bedevils people’s lives.”
And Saturday, he notes, is when the working-class people who put him in office have time to talk.
Brown, who once joked that he took the job as mayor because the position of emperor wasn’t available, says, “I just enjoy solving problems. When I can instantly correct the imbalance, that gives me a reason for being mayor.”
Sometimes the suitors bring solutions instead of problems. Brown has hired several of them for his staff and appointed two to city commissions.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier says Brown “views himself as the sun king. When he shines all things happen–jobs appear,” says Matier. “But there are two sides to Willie Brown. If you’re on his good side, doors open. But if you’re on his bad side, doors slam, and they slam on your foot.”
Critics charge that his administration is rife with back-slapping patronage and point to an FBI probe into alleged bribery at the city’s housing authority. Homelessness is rampant and management of public transportation is notoriously inept.
But his meet-the-folks regimen helps keep his adversaries at bay.
“Willie Brown represents an era when politicians called the shots from their gut and didn’t worry about public opinion polls,” said a cabby named Frank who brought his son to get the mayor’s autograph. “He’s going to be historically famous one day.”
Brown’s accessibility is more than just a once a month gig. He has a regular public-access television show, writes a community newspaper column and enjoys offbeat public exchanges at restaurants and after church.
He even lists his home telephone number. And after a woman woke him at 2:30 a.m. to complain that a street light was out, the mayor had the problem fixed that very day.
Then he called her back to give her the news: at 2:30 a.m.
Experts say Brown represents a new trend of personal outreach practiced by mayors nationwide.
“Mayors are reaching beyond the gatekeepers to touch people with their own personal styles,” says Chris Gates of the National Civic League, a think tank specializing in government issues.
Both New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan appear on weekly radio shows. And mayors in Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Little Rock each have regular forums to which the public is invited.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown conducts “house meetings” in which he visits the homes of residents to field questions from the host and a dozen neighbors.
Along with his open door sessions, Flint, Mich., Mayor Woodrow Stanley cruises the streets in a motor home that serves as his “mobile city hall.”
To win an audience with Willie Brown, people lose sleep.
Like anxious rock fans, the throngs line up at 3:30 a.m. for passes to one of Brown’s 10-minute sessions.
Before dawn on a recent Thursday, newspaper delivery trucks prowled empty city streets as 40 residents huddled in the dark, waiting for the doors to open at 7 a.m. The first 25 landed appointments for the following Saturday.
Come meeting day, various city department heads are summoned to help Brown field visitor queries.
“And if they don’t have an immediate answer to his questions,” said aide Bevan Dufty, “the mayor is not pleased.”
Visitors are offered tips on how to manage their moments with the mayor: No stacks of documents–the mayor is a people person. Don’t read from any prepared script. And when you’re meeting with Willie Brown, don’t bring along any models, starlets or anyone else too sexy.
Dufty tells of a man accompanied by a well-dressed woman who “immediately had the mayor’s undivided attention.” As the two chatted, the man complained to aides that his precious time was running out.
Said Dufty: “I just told him ‘Well, you brought her here.’ “
At the meetings, Brown assumes his seat at the head of a circular conference table, looking pensive as he sorts through long-winded, often convoluted stories.
As a man talks of his attention deficit disorder, Brown says: “I’ve suffered from that all my life. People think it’s arrogance. It’s not.”
From Father Figure to Cross-Examiner
To keep the people flow moving, the mayor often consults his watch and calls out “Who’s next?”
A streetwise attorney who once represented San Francisco’s prostitutes and other roustabouts, he plays the various roles of father figure, tough cross-examiner and “old country lawyer.”
When a couple complained the screeching brakes of city street cars kept them up at night, Brown summoned his transportation chief to get the tracks oiled.
But the woman who griped about city harassment over her unpaid parking tickets saw another side of Da Mayor. Brown listened patiently and then asked how many tickets she was talking about.
Her answer: 2,200.
“She got a pretty stern lecture,” recalls Brown press secretary Kandace Bender. “He told her that nobody should have 2,200 parking tickets, that she needed to take responsibility for her life.”
Glenda Patterson wanted to lecture Brown after he told her he couldn’t intervene to ensure the bathrooms at her sons’ school were kept clean. “He blew me off so bad,” she said.
“Why bring people in here if you’re just going to say [the problem] ‘ain’t mine’?”
But Brown has had great success with the city’s legion of emotionally troubled residents, some of whom arrive hearing voices and claiming to have such things as “pornography astrally projected inside their home,” aides say.
In 1996, one troubled man even lunged at the mayor. But Brown has since found his stride.
When one man confessed he hadn’t left his apartment for days because he feared people were rearranging his belongings, Brown pledged to post security outside his home to keep out the intruders. “You won’t know who they are,” he told the thankful man, “because they’ll be undercover.”
After once observing that many Saturday visitors were “clearly in need of serious therapy,” Brown has eased his stance.
“This whole town is made up of people with a different perspective on life,” he says. “By other people’s standards it’s not realistic, but for them it’s very real. There’s no sense disturbing them.”
That theory is put to the test when a man wearing a Willie Brown T-shirt offers a movie role for Brown, who has had cameos in such films as “The Godfather Part II.” In mid-thought, the visitor launches into a talk about the Big Bang theory and how everyone on the planet is legally dead.
“I’m a pretty crazy guy,” he finally says. “I’ve been on disability for 20 years. I have a lot of time.”
“Yes, you would,” Brown replies.
With the suggestion that he can get some script guidance from the city’s film office, another happy constituent heads for the door.
And San Francisco’s Saturday morning deal maker utters another call to action.
“Who’s next?” he says.
