Valerie Terrigno

I was told I’d never win. My name was wrong. I was way on the bottom of the ballot. I was a lesbian. But on November 6, 1984, I was elected to the first West Hollywood City Council with the most votes of the five winning candidates. 
        My real involvement in California politics started in 1978 when I met Sally Fiske, a lesbian activist who was running the No on 6 campaign to fight the Briggs Initiative [the California ballot measure to ban gays, lesbians, and their allies from teaching in public schools]. We became close friends, and as two of the few visible lesbians in the Los Angeles area, we were always invited to political events because the men wanted some women at those things. Over the next few years, I met Governor Jerry Brown, [California State] Senator David Roberti, and Bob Hattoy [the influential gay rights and environmental activist]. Sally got me to join the Stonewall Democratic Club, and I became cochair of the club with Steve Weltman in 1983.   In late 1983, Ron Stone [known as the Father of Cityhood] approached me and said, “Valerie, I’m doing this thing to create a city, and I think you should run for City Council because you have a big following with Stonewall, and it would help our cause.” I loved the whole idea of Cityhood, but I told Ron, “I don’t want to run for office.” Everybody kept pushing me to run, so I decided to.
        When I started campaigning, I didn’t know a lot of the local players in West Hollywood. I did know the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) endorsement was important. It was part of my campaign plan to get one of the remaining endorsements on their slate of five City Council candidates—in addition to John Heilman, who I knew from working with him on the ACLU Lesbian and Gay chapter, Helen Albert, and Doug Routh. I agreed with CES on almost every aspect of rent control, but I wasn’t as adamant as they were on certain things. I saw myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
        Speaking to voters about Cityhood was like selling a product for me. And I loved selling Cityhood. I remember being instructed to spend only five minutes with each voter, but sometimes I’d spend an hour with someone if I could convince them Cityhood was a good idea. The seniors liked me because I was “a nice girl,” but in the Norma Triangle [the northwest mostly homeowner part of the City], many residents were against Cityhood. I won a lot of them over by saying, “If you don’t want an independent city, vote No on Cityhood. But if there’s going to be a City, you’ll want someone like me to represent you to protect your interests.”  
        I was always a coalition builder, and I thought it was important to meet with people during the campaign I disagreed with. I tried to be nice to everyone, even though there was some divisiveness among the different groups and candidates in the community. I told Grafton Tanquary, the head of the West Hollywood landlords’ group, Concerned Citizens, that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me on rent control. But we were always friendly to each other. I sat down with Severyn Ashkenazy, the landlord and hotelier who CES thought was a horrible human being. After I told Severyn he should market his hotels to the international gay community, we became friends, even though he wasn’t sure about Cityhood or “the gay candidates.” It never occurred to people like Severyn that I was a lesbian because I always wore my pearls, even when I had a sweatshirt on, and always had my nails done.  
        I met Alan Viterbi early in the campaign, when we turned in our candidate papers to run. We hit it off right away and did some campaigning together. I was gay and he was Jewish, and at that time, West Hollywood was like thirty-three percent gay, thirty-three percent [mostly Jewish] senior, and over eighty-five percent renter. One of the funniest things that happened after the election was when this older woman came up to me, accusing me of having an affair with her husband because she had seen a Jewish New Year card I sent her husband in her house. I sent that card to all registered Jewish voters during the campaign. By the next year, when I sent cards again, she had registered to vote.  
        Our first City Council meeting was held in Plummer Park’s Fiesta Hall, and I barely made it in time because the lot was so packed I couldn’t find a parking space. After the City Council was sworn in, my colleagues and I had to choose a mayor. I was the obvious choice because I was the top vote-getter. That night, I became the first out lesbian mayor in the country. The room was full of excitement, and media from around the world were there to cover the new city and the first gay-majority City Council anywhere.  
        That night, I introduced a motion for a domestic partnership ordinance, but since it hadn’t been written, we couldn’t vote on it, so San Francisco passed one first—but we were still the first to introduce the idea. Later, my mother later said, “I had no idea that you didn’t have the same rights that we [heterosexual couples] had.” 
        After that night, an article by the Associated Press (AP) was published about me as the first lesbian mayor and I became an overnight celebrity. I felt pressure. I started getting all this media attention from around the world and invitations to speak in different cities. I’d get to an airport and people would recognize me and they would ask for my autograph. After Councilmember Steve Schulte and I appeared on Sally, the Sally Jessy Raphael TV talk show, we got letters from straight Christians saying things like, “You handle yourself so well. You’ve opened our eyes to what gay people are like.” Our election made the rest of the country realize there were gay people everywhere. 
        People kept saying that the mayor is just a figurehead, but those first few weeks after we won and had a new city to create, I didn't feel like a figurehead. I was working my butt off, flying by the seat of my pants trying to make sure everything was up and running. There were huge decisions to make. I remember laughing when I saw the Los Angeles County book of ordinances. It was so thick and had some really archaic things in it. I knew if we adopted it, everybody in West Hollywood would be arrested in seconds because the code said that a person couldn’t have their backside showing more than one inch. 
        Our biggest challenges in those first days were hiring staff and getting enough sleep. I woke up the morning after our first council meeting, and outside my front gate were two three-foot stacks of resumes on each side of the gate addressed to the Honorable Mayor Terrigno. In there was one for Mary Tyson, whom we hired as our first city clerk. She knew what to do. Then, pretty fast, we hired a temporary city manager, Fred Bien. I liked the nuts and bolts of getting everything organized. Right away, the City Council decided to assign ourselves to working committees so we could handle everything. John Heilman got personnel. Steve Schulte and I got the Sheriff’s Department and L.A. County Fire Department. Alan Viterbi got business. I don’t remember what Helen Albert got.
        I realized after a while, the hardest part of being on the City Council was not being a lesbian—it was being a woman. I mean, it was 1984 and people were still thinking it was a man’s job. I had to be forward and strong. The first week we were in office, we get a call that a bunch of people are sitting on top of a billboard on Sunset Boulevard near Sunset Tower Records. The billboard company didn’t even notify us that they were doing a publicity stunt, paying people to sit on the billboard for like a week, and I was mad. I saw the stunt as a public safety danger and a slap in the face at the City. I called the company and said, “How dare you. We’ve just become a city, and you’re doing this?” I think I just basically threatened to make their lives really miserable, and they ended the stunt in three days.
        The City Council was so progressive on just about everything, and we agreed on a lot. I am so proud we were the first city to take stands on certain issues: domestic partnership; refusing to do business with Alabama, which became the first anti-choice state in the country [since Roe v. Wade]; and boycotting companies that did business with apartheid South Africa, which made it harder to equip City Hall since IBM computers were the standard at the time. We were not afraid to do the right thing, and it really embarrassed other cities into doing the right thing, too. We funded a lot of social services right off the bat and gave money to small-sized nonprofits that focused on our demographics: GLASS, Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services for at-risk LBGTQ+ teens, started by Terry DeCrescenzo, and Alternative Living for the Aging (ALA), a nonprofit that Janet Witkin created to provide independent living cooperatives for seniors.
        I believe almost every vote I cast was just the right vote, but I think one of the hardest things for any new politician to realize is that the day is going to come when they have to compromise on an issue. I had a lot of ideas that went nowhere. I wanted to start a shuttle service that during the day took seniors around the City and at night took people from bar to bar. I was told we couldn’t do it because the insurance would cost too much. Sometime after I was off the City Council, the City did start that service. I wanted to immediately beautify the median strip because I hated those railroad tracks down Santa Monica Boulevard, but my colleagues thought we should wait. The City Council also voted down my idea for limited free parking to promote our businesses, similar to what Beverly Hills does in its municipal parking lots. When I proposed a comparable worth ordinance early on, our first full-time City Manager, Paul Brotzman, said, “Oh, this is impossible, it would cost too much money.” I said, “Why is it impossible when we have a landscaper who just digs the dirt and mows the lawn, and he’s getting paid more than a high-level female administrator who has amazing skills and all kinds of experience?” 
        In 1985, we passed our antidiscrimination/hate crime ordinance that came with a $1,000 a day fine. We thought finally, the Barney’s Beanery sign, “FAGOTS – STAY OUT” [sic] would come down. When we realized that Irwin [Held], the owner, hadn’t yet taken the sign down, Alan Viterbi and I decided to notify the media and went over to Barney’s to get the sign. The day happened to be Martin Luther King’s birthday. When we got there, Irwin was belligerent. Once the media cameras arrived, Irwin said, “Well, you take down the sign yourselves.” I said, “Well, give me a screwdriver.” Next thing I know, that’s what the newspapers are printing. 
        After we passed that ordinance, we had to educate the Sheriff’s Department on what a hate crime was. When I found out sheriff’s deputies pulled over this Black guy in a gorgeous car because they said, “He didn’t belong here [West Hollywood],” I told them, “If people are doing something illegal, then they’re yours. If they’re walking down our streets or are in our bars, then they’re my people.” I had to explain harassment to them like they were children. I also heard about discrimination against transgender people who were not welcomed in our bars, so I went around to the bar owners and said, “You can’t do that.” I was a thirty-year-old mayor meeting with a lot of people who were twenty years older than me and telling them what to do. Passing our rent control law was an early priority, but there was also some talk about passing a commercial rent control law. The business community was really opposed to that idea, and real estate developer/commercial landlord Ron Kates lobbied us hard not to. I think it’s something that should have been looked into because the prices for commercial rentals are just exorbitant today. 
        We were lobbied a lot back then by developers and others who wanted something from the City. I remember being taken to Chasen’s restaurant and thinking, “Oh my God, is it wrong to let people who want something from us pay for our meals?” I don’t think any councilmember among us gave anyone a vote because of a meal—that’s for damn sure. 
        After I was on the City Council for a little over two years, I had to step down. I was convicted in 1986 for embezzling funds from the Crossroads Counseling Center, where I had worked. During my trial, scads of people rallied around me and said the charges against me were gay baiting. I don’t think that if I weren’t a lesbian, the FBI and Reagan Administration would have spent millions of dollars going after me for an alleged $6,000 error. 
        After I stepped down from the City Council, I kept an eye on things for about a year. Then, I just completely disappeared. I decided that life goes on. But I do care a lot about the City. I can gripe about it not being perfect, but it’s because I expect so much of us. I think we’re probably one of the most progressive cities in terms of our social services, our social awareness, in America. Every step we took in those first years paved the way for the gay community—and for progressive policies around the country. 
        The things that Mayor Buttigieg said when he ran for president in 2020, like “I am just a person just doing my job,” were the things I was saying thirty-five years ago. 
        Our idealism and the uniqueness of our city are our legacy—not just my legacy, but the legacy of the group of us who put all our ideas and efforts together for Cityhood. Ron Stone started this whole thing. We can’t forget him.