Gay SF Political Consultant Makes Trump Donation

Gay San Francisco political consultant Jack Davis has spent much of his career helping elect Democrats. So it was surprising to see his name on a list of local donors to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

A list of local Trump donors on the San Francisco Examiner's website last week listed Davis as having donated $2,700 to the campaign.

"It is me," Davis said in an email when contacted last week.

Davis, 70, helped elect former Mayor Willie Brown and has had a hand in various campaigns over the years. He now splits his time between San Francisco and South Wales.

He said that he was a "huge" Bernie Sanders supporter during the primaries as the Vermont senator was a populist reform candidate. Sanders was "part of a movement to change Washington's insider corrupt politics by creating a movement that understood Secretary [Hillary] Clinton represented the entrenched special interests, banks, Wall Street, lawyers at the expense of ordinary people who were losing their jobs because of stupid trade deals and policies that favored the rich," Davis said.

He said he wanted change and decided he would support Trump in July.

At the time, Trump's campaign "was more of a populist campaign against the haves, vetting immigrants, no open doors, ending the stupid Democratic 'globalization theory' that was not working and diminishing America's standing in the world and the pitiful Obama-Clinton misunderstanding of radical Muslim extremism and Sharia law."

"A law that would kill all LGBTQ individuals in the most barbaric ways. Beat and kill women. I am indeed fearful for America and its people, of our future," Davis said.

Davis said that eight years ago, he was an early Barack Obama supporter, "to the distress of many of my Democratic friends."

"Hillary Clinton was someone I didn't trust then," he added. "Today she is a seminal liar who has lied under oath, used her position to raise money for the Clinton Foundation from dictatorships with disastrous records on human rights, plotted behind Bernie's back, will sell her soul for a couple hundred [thousand] in speech money to Wall Street brokers, [and] supports open borders."

Clinton's campaign has been beset by problems related to her use of a private server while she was secretary of state. After clearing her in July, last week, FBI Director James Comey wrote to congressional leaders that investigators had found more emails on a laptop belonging to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide, apparently saved the emails. It is not yet known if they are pertinent to the previous Clinton investigation.

Long Involved in Politics

Davis arrived in San Francisco in 1972 as part of the gay migration.

"It was a time of assimilation and community building," he said in the email.

He joined the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and later was a charter member of the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club (now the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club). He was a friend of Milk's.

In 1977 he was asked to go to Dade County, Florida to help fight Anita Bryant's initiative.

"Jim Foster, David Scott, Randy Shilts, Lenny Matlovich, Bob Basker, and Jack Campbell, to name a few, spent months working with the local community to defeat the first vote in America to take away human rights," Davis recalled.

They lost, but ended up gaining in the long run.

"That debate forced America to face us as a people," Davis said. "It changed my life, too."

Davis said he started to see running campaigns as a cause, along with other gay consultants such as the late Dick Pabich and the late Jim Rivaldo. Electing Mike Hennessey as San Francisco sheriff was Davis' first campaign, he said, and he built his company.

Other campaigns he has worked on include the San Francisco Giants downtown ballpark, BART to the airport, the Laguna Honda First Committee, UCSF Mission Bay campus, and the 49er Stadium-Mall campaign.

Davis said that he's "well aware" of those who view his Trump donation - and his thoughts on the presidential race - as "heresy."

"I'm OK with that," he said. "It's time to drain the swamp that is Washington politics as usual. In this great democracy my views are just as valid as any others."