Some City Hall insiders wonder whether Sparks will lose her established independence now that she is employed at the mayor's whim. Sparks' relationship with Newsom hasn't always been chummy. He was rumored to have been upset when Sparks, appointed by his rivals on the Board of Supervisors, was elected president of the police commission. Since then, however, the two have obviously settled their differences. Still, Sparks says not to count her as a mayoral lackey any time soon. After all, this is a woman who doesn't hesitate to call arguments she doesn't agree with "horseshit," and once returned an award to a nonprofit she thought had turned its back on transgender people. "I won't [lose my independence], because that's just who I am," she says. "If the disagreement is severe enough, I'll be looking for a new job."
Many have heard she already is: attempting to replace termed-out Chris Daly as District 6 supervisor in next year's election. For the past year, Sparks has been following doctor's orders to lay off heavy exercise, which she claims is the primary reason she'd been apartment searching in flatter parts of the city. She has told Democrats like party regional director August Longo that she is interested in running, and asking who would support her. Declared District 6 candidate Jim Meko noticed her at the recent Taste of South Beach event, where Jason Chan, the mayor's appointments secretary, introduced her to local leaders.
Frank Gaglione
Jake Poehls
Sparks and former Police Chief Heather Fong at the Police Commission.
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"I'm leaning heavily toward" running, she says. "I've been having a lot of meetings with a lot of people and gotten a really positive response. ... They're not too impressed with the current candidates." She says she'll announce her final decision in the next month.
While Meko says Sparks would be a carpetbagger in the district, David Villa-Lobos said he'd withdraw his candidacy and support her. Supervisor David Campos supports fellow Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club member Debra Walker in the race, but acknowledges that Sparks would offer a dose of independence to a politicized City Hall. "I don't think she fits in one camp or the other necessarily," he says. "So that's something that she brings to the table."
Sparks says her history in the district goes back to her early activism with transgender women in the Tenderloin, and speaks fervently every chance she gets about making the neighborhood safe for immigrant and low-income San Franciscans. She thinks she could probably make more of an impact as a supervisor than at her current post, yet still has to get over her remaining hesitancy about joining the "blood sport" of San Francisco politics. "Being a supervisor is a very hard task," she says. "It takes a toll on you personally, and [I] have to decide if that's where I want to go." At her age, Sparks says holding a supervisor's office would be her last job, not a stepping stone to higher office. It would also mean her salary would be cut nearly in half.
Political aspirations aside, Sparks' personal life is still absorbing the impact of her transition. The good news is that after a decade, her sons finally reconciled with her last year, one even moving in with her. Yet other problems persist: Her siblings still won't talk to her. And after what she estimates was $100,000 in surgeries and medical procedures, she has no savings and thus no choice but to continue working at an age when many people start to ponder retirement.
But not for an instant does Sparks ever regret the change. To the contrary: "I often wonder if I hadn't transitioned, if I would have made it these last 12 years," she says. She accepts that she's still "Dad" to her kids and "Madam Director" to her employees, and, most of the time, has stopped worrying about whether people identify her as a woman. However much San Francisco can look past Sparks being transgendered, there's no question that this is a city where identity politics matter. Sparks, who left behind all the advantages of being a white male in American society, acknowledges she would never have gotten the Human Rights Commission job if she were still "a straight white guy. But," she says, "I may have been mayor."
