Written by:
Gretchen Lee
Photographer:
tm gibson
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 13#3
Born in San Francisco to working-class parents from Mexico, Susan Leal says she wanted as a child only to grow up and play for the San Francisco 49ers football team. “It wasn’t until I was 8 or 9 years old that it began to dawn on me that it wasn’t going to happen,” she laughs.
In 1993, Leal was elected to serve on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where she co-authored the city’s landmark domestic partners bill, among other things. In 1998, she was elected treasurer of the city of San Francisco.
If Leal succeeds in her bid for the San Francisco mayor’s office this November, she’ll make history as the first out lesbian elected mayor of a major U.S. city. Already the race is heating up, with big-business candidates lining one side of the street and reformer candidates like Leal on the other. “I’m a bit out there, being a dyke, being a Latina,” she acknowledges. “But what my candidacy does is it sends a message to women, whether they’re queer or women of color, that the last barriers could be broken.”
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