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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Hangout: Councilman Ken Yeager at home in the Rose Garden. He once moved to Chicago to become a novelist, but instead of becoming a writer, he followed his passion for politics.
Yeager takes council seat
District 6 has a new councilman, but he's no stranger to politics
By Kate Carter
Ken Yeager once dreamed of writing the great American novel. But unlike so many others who long to capture the American consciousness in words, Yeager actually set out to do it.
With a degree in political science from San Jose State University and a few years of experience in politics, he boarded a train and headed east out of San Jose.
The fifth-generation Californian from Riverside had never left his home state. When he got to Chicago, he decided he'd arrived in a place where he wanted to live: it was the biggest town he'd ever seen.
"One day I got off the train in Chicago, because it was just a stop along the way," Yeager says. "I really fell in love with it, so I decided to stay. That was before I ever went to New York. I think if I'd gone to New York, I would have loved it. For me, it just happened to be Chicago."
Although Yeager, 48, never got around to finishing the great American novel, he still hasn't stopped writing or pursuing and achieving other dreams. Since then, Yeager has spent over 20 years working in politics. He cofounded a gay and lesbian rights advocacy organization, earned a doctorate in education, got a teaching job at San Jose State, ran 19 marathons and won two terms on the San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board.
And while he didn't write a novel, he did write a nonfiction book, published in 1999. Trailblazers: Profiles of America's Gay and Lesbian Elected Officials compiles the political experiences of 12 such individuals, and includes a memoir of Yeager's own experience as an openly gay man running for political office.
Yeager reached another milestone Jan. 5, when he was sworn in as a San Jose City Councilman. And by doing that, he became the city's first openly gay council member and continued as the only openly gay elected official in Santa Clara County since he was first elected to the city college board in 1992.
Yeager was given the oath by Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell at a ceremony at the Three Flames restaurant in Willow Glen (although he technically became a councilman in late December). The room was packed with hundreds of supporters, and many prominent South Bay Democrats were also on hand, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren.
Doug Winslow, president of American Data Management and Emu Printing, provided some data and printing services to Yeager's campaign for the District 6 seat. He's also a gay activist who has known Yeager for 20 years. Winslow says Yeager has been ready for the city council post for 10 to 15 years, but that he was held back by bias against gay people.
"It worried us in the campaign," Winslow says. "But I think times are changing. This is a very well-educated district, District 6. It's a perfect match."
Yeager says he doesn't restrict himself to what others expect of him, or what others would expect of themselves.
"I was never going to limit myself by what other people may or may not do."
For Yeager, politics, like writing, is just something he loves to do.
"Even as a kid, I was always interested in politics and in writing," Yeager says. "If I have any two loves, it's politics and writing, and I've always been conflicted between the two."
Now, though, Yeager has chosen to devote most of time and energy to politics, and leave writing for later.
"I'm just a firm believer that government can do a lot of good, particularly if you get the right people there. And I really wanted to make sure that government was responsive and was working for the benefit of people. If there's anything I truly believe, it's that, and that I could be a part of that, and that I could make a difference."
War and Peace of Mind
Yeager says he's the only one of his three older siblings who has his passion for politics. His parents weren't in politics, but they are devoted Democrats, just as Yeager is.
Yeager got his start in the political arena when he was elected seventh-grade president. His campaign slogan, "Put a Tiger in Your Tank with Yea-grrr," may have made the difference in that race. Yeager thinks his mother, his first campaign manager, came up with the slogan while they sat around the kitchen table and made campaign buttons.
Yeager held elected positions throughout junior high and high school, and he also became involved in the high school newspaper. As a senior, he chose to be the paper's editor rather than run for student body president. This was during the late '60s and early '70s, and he used the newspaper to write about the turbulent times he was living in.
"People of my generation were being killed," Yeager remembers. "The big fear right after graduation was going to Vietnam. These were huge issues facing us. How could you not talk about the social rebellion that was going on around us?"
But unlike many others who grew up during Vietnam and Watergate, Yeager didn't become jaded by government. Instead, the events of those years merely increased his zeal for politics and encouraged him to get involved.
"I suppose the Vietnam War was the defining event of my youth, as it would have been for anybody," he says. "It made me learn to be critical of government, that our leaders can make big mistakes, and that ultimately, if you disagree, it's up to you to speak out against the policies. In a sense, you sort of felt that your protests could result in change, that you could make a difference."
Yeager adds: "It's part of the reason why I want to be involved in government. I remember all of those thoughts I had as a teenager, as far as the kind of government that I wanted us to have, which was a responsive government, one that would listen to people."
Yeager got a high draft number and was never called to serve in Vietnam. But if he had been called, Yeager says, he wouldn't have considered avoiding service.
"I assumed, if I was going to get drafted, I was going to go. It was just something that loomed out there."
Off and Running: The Austin marathon is one of 19 that Yeager has completed since he started running in the mid-'80s.
Photograph courtesy of Ken Yeager
San Jose State rites
After graduating from high school in 1971, Yeager left Riverside to attend San Jose State University. He had planned to become a journalist and started working toward an English degree.
But politics interested him more.
"I was so emotionally involved in politics," Yeager says, "that I was afraid that if I majored in it, I would just get too wrapped up in it, I would get too consumed, I would get too emotional and die of a heart attack, I was just so involved. And then I took my first political science class, I think, as a junior, and then I realized then, well, who was I kidding, this was the major for me."
San Jose State's Dr. Terry Christensen was one of Yeager's professors at San Jose State and was later his colleague and boss there. The two have been friends since Yeager first sought Christensen out to learn more about local politics.
"He is intense and passionate and focused about what he believes he needs to achieve," Christensen says. "He was the same way when I first met him."
While still in college, Yeager began his long tenure of work on the campaigns and staffs of various South Bay politicians, including former San Jose City Councilwoman and former county Supervisor Susanne Wilson, ex-county Supervisor Rod Diridon Sr., former Democratic Rep. Don Edwards, and others.
About a year after graduating, Yeager took that train trip that landed him in Chicago.
But a year and a half later, the book wasn't going well, and Yeager wasn't either. Wilson called him and invited him to come back and work for her now that she was a county supervisor.
"She always puts it in terms that she rescued me from Chicago," Yeager says with a laugh. "That probably was the case. I was pretty miserable."
After two years with Wilson, Yeager worked on Edwards' 1982 re-election campaign, and then went to Washington, D.C., as his press relations aide.
He returned to San Jose in 1984, still working for Edwards as his local office press aide.
It was in San Jose that Yeager again used writing to criticize government, and opened himself up to public criticism, as well.
Speaking out in print
In 1984, state lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. On March 9 of that year, the San Jose Mercury News published an opinion piece by local Assemblyman Alister McAlister advising then-Gov. George Deukmejian to veto the bill.
Yeager says he was so offended by the editorial that he decided to write an editorial of his own, responding to McAlister's. It ran in the Mercury News on March 18.
"It was very much a feeling that this elected official had said that gays and lesbians just didn't deserve to have any rights," Yeager says. "I knew if I wanted to change that, I had to speak out."
However, some of Yeager's friends and family didn't know he was gay. Yeager says that, although they were surprised by the editorial, most remained supportive of him--and do to this day.
Christensen remembers the late '70s and early '80s as a difficult time to be openly gay in the South Bay, if not in the state and in the country. In 1978, voters in both Santa Clara County and San Jose voted to repeal a recently passed gay rights ordinance.
"It took a lot of guts to do what he did," Christensen says of Yeager. "There was a seriously anti-gay attitude around here. In a way, the editorial made him a public figure."
Former Supervisor Wilson has known Yeager since he was in college and considers him "almost a fourth son." She says that Yeager's decision to speak up for his rights and those of other gay and lesbian people was just something he had to do.
"At the time that he interned for me (in college) I think he was still struggling with who he was," Wilson says. "In the '80s, he began to make some critical decisions about himself."
By the time he wrote the editorial, Wilson adds, "he'd probably already done the courageous stuff.
"As politicians," she says, "there comes a time in our lives when we feel something is so important, you don't think of yourself as courageous, you don't think you're ending your career. What you think is 'who I am as a person.' Do you really believe in what you believe in? If you do, then it's not courageous. You feel like this is the right thing to do."
Yeager says that the implications of his editorial did frighten him, but his sense of justice outweighed his fear.
"I worry for people who don't strive to be all they can be or who feel they need to limit themselves, because they're gay or lesbian or a woman or a minority or anybody," Yeager says. "Absolutely nobody should have those restrictions on their pursuits in life. That angers me a lot, when I see society doing that to other people.
"That's what I believe I can fight against."
Deukmejian vetoed the anti-discrimination bill, and it was never signed into law, although later governors did pass some less visible measures to give more protections to gay and lesbians.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Doctor Ken: Yeager has a doctorate from Stanford and teaches political science at San Jose State University. He'll continue teaching while he's on the council.
Doors open, and close
Yeager looked for other avenues to help gay and lesbian people gain political power. In 1984, he and SJSU sociology professor and counselor Wiggsy Sivertsen formed the Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee (BAYMEC), a group that works for political support for gay and lesbian rights.
"At the time, there was no gay organization at all," Yeager says.
In 1985, Yeager was considering work in education policy, so he headed to graduate school at Stanford University. He earned two master's degrees in both education policy and sociology, and went on to earn his doctorate in education policy in 1990.
A year later, he landed a job as a political science professor at his alma mater, San Jose State University.
"He's a really good and popular teacher," says Christensen. "But I think Ken is less interested in doing research on politics than in doing politics."
While at Stanford, Yeager had started running to counteract the effects of his smoking on his racquetball game.
That was when he decided to run a different kind of race.
"I remember running a quarter of a mile around Angel Field at Stanford, and being totally worn out," he says. "It all started from there, from the first quarter mile, just building up over time to eventually then being able to run a marathon. At some point I just set my mind on the goal that I could run a marathon, and just kept training. It was a challenge. I suppose I've always liked challenges. If you're going to run, that seems to be the likely progression, that you're going to run marathons.
Yeager sees a similarity between his drive to run marathons and his drive to succeed in politics.
"It takes a certain amount of perseverance and a mindset that says, 'You can do this,' " he says. "You have to want to do it. The same thing is true with politics and running for office. It doesn't just happen by chance. It takes a lot of work. Bringing about change in society is the same thing. I've always taken the long view, knowing that it will take years to bring about change. If you're impatient, then politics is not the activity for you, because things don't change quickly."
He was able to put that determination and discipline to the test in 1992, when he ran for and was elected to the San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board. Doing so, he became the first and, still, the only openly gay elected official in the county.
"I remember in this town how hard it was for women to get elected, and for minorities. It's often the case, as soon as one person gets elected, then people realize that they can represent the whole community. If there was anything that I was striving for, it was for people to consider us as elected leaders, as well, not to exclude anybody from society. I hope now that other people will run and that being gay just shouldn't be an issue. That's what's happened elsewhere. I think that's what probably will happen here as well, and I think that's the goal. It just shouldn't be an issue."
And in 1996, Yeager ran for a seat in the state Assembly. He suffered his first-ever election loss in the Democratic primary to Mike Honda, who went on to win the seat. Right before the election, he became the victim of an anti-gay hit-piece from opponent David Cortese. Cortese, who later apologized to Yeager, was also elected to the council in November, and was recently sworn in as the new District 8 councilman.
Those experiences, running for office as a gay man, contributed to Yeager's decision to write and include himself in his 1999 book.
"I'm enough of a writer to know when I see a good story, and I think with that book and with my campaign, I thought there was a story there to tell," he says. "I've always understood the influence the written word has, and I suppose that's also why I wrote the book. If you really aren't able to record something, or be able to translate your thoughts to people, then it really doesn't have much of an impact. My way of trying to tell other people that you should overlook or look beyond sexual orientation when electing somebody, the best way I could do that was writing stories about people who achieved that themselves."
Yeager says he doesn't like to make his sexual orientation an issue, and he doesn't necessarily see himself as being a "trailblazer."
"I think it is easier to see those traits in other people rather than in yourself," he says.
Christensen, to whom Yeager dedicated his book, says that Yeager had to establish his credibility beyond his sexual orientation in order to win an elected position, and that he had done that long before his run for state assembly or for city council, when anti-gay attitudes were far more prevalent.
"When Ken really blazed a trail was eight years ago when he was elected to the community college board," Christensen says. "By the time he got to this part of the trail, it almost wasn't blazing."
Yeager says that he was concerned that people might not elect him to city council because he was gay, but that wouldn't stop him from trying anyway.
"None of us knew whether an openly gay person could win the office," Yeager says of his run for the city council seat. "But I didn't run just because of that."
Yeager wanted to try his hand at a new elected position, and he felt the time was right for him to run for city council.
"I had a great experience on the college board," he says. "I have learned a lot about how government works and how you can really change an institution."
Enter the councilman
Nancy Pyle, who worked with Yeager as a San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board trustee from 1996 to 2000, says Yeager wanted to bring what he offered at the school board to city hall.
"He wanted to be on that council very, very badly. I think his whole career has been geared to leadership in politics."
As he enters office, Yeager says he has some specific goals he'd like to accomplish, in addition to responding to constituent issues. He says he wants to rebuild the Rose Garden and Willow Glen libraries, add trails to the Guadalupe River and connect them to the Los Gatos Creek Trail. "You should be able to hike or bike or jog from Alviso to Lexington Reservoir," he says.
He says he also hopes to make Lincoln Avenue safer for pedestrians and more successful for businesses.
Other issues include handling infill development and, of course, traffic: "It's probably the biggest quality of life issue for people here," he says.
He says he hopes to attend many of the community and association meetings himself, not merely send one of his staff members.
Those who know him well say that Yeager is well prepared for his new office, even overprepared. They describe him as very serious and studious, analytical and loathe to delegate. They say he will excel at making budgetary decisions. They say he is a listener and that he wants to help people understand how the system works.
"He's a brain," campaign consultant Winslow says. "I consider him one of the most studious, hard-working and serious office holders I've ever met. Some people think he's overly serious."
But there are some things that Yeager will be challenged by, some say.
"I think he will have to learn that there comes a time for decision making," Wilson says. "He never can completely do what the community wants. But because of his experience, he really understands the whole process. And dealing with bureaucracy as a councilman will be strange for him. That will be truly a learning experience for him, and not always a bed of roses."
Christensen agrees that Yeager "will have to get past the analytical tendencies."
And Winslow says Yeager could be hindered if he moved up politically, because he tends to overanalyze everything and he doesn't delegate very well. But he says won't be a problem on city council: "At the council level, it's exactly what you need."
But Winslow adds that there are those who may put pressure on Yeager to look to the future.
"Some of us are always looking for the talented people to run for higher office," Winslow says. "You'd like to see them go places."
Yeager says he would like to run for re-election in four years, if he likes the job and does it well. But he says he hasn't make any decisions yet about higher office.
He adds that he'd like to try to write about his experience as a city councilman, to help people better understand how decisions are made and how they can influence them.
"Maybe that's part of the teacher in me, of then being able to tell others, well this is how our government really works. If you tell others, particularly community activists, of how the government works on the inside, then they perhaps can be more effective in bringing about change, too."
Yeager says he's excited about the new opportunities his job brings him to do what he loves.
"There are all sorts of ways to bring about change, and for me it's just always been politics," he says. "The world is less than perfect, and it's my way of trying to make it more perfect. A lot of people dismiss politics, but I've always seen what a positive agent it can be.
"I hope that my being gay enables me to understand what it's like to be an outsider in society, that the government was there for other people but not for me. Government should be there for everybody. So I certainly have a deep commitment to opening the doors and letting everybody's voice be heard."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
