The living room of state Sen. Milton Marks’ San Francisco home is like a shrine to Winston Churchill.
Books upon books about the famed leader pack ceiling-high bookcases. Even more sit on coffee and side tables. A small Churchill bust adorns a crowded shelf of chachkas, Jewish and secular alike. The British statesman is everywhere.
“I once stood for four hours to watch him get into his automobile,” Marks says. “I thought it was worth it.”
The wait was worthwile, he says, because “I think he was a man of great courage. He stood up for what he thought was correct.”
As term limits oust the 76-year-old Marks from the state Senate after 38 years in office, there are those detractors who say Marks’ effectiveness has waned. Some of Marks’ most ardent supporters, however, attribute to the politician the very qualities he hails in Churchill.
“I think Milton’s political history in this city is one that has demonstrated compassion and caring,” says John Rothmann, a San Francisco political consultant who now serves as Marks’ district coordinator. “Frankly, he has been on the right side of virtually every social issue.”
Marks has often taken unpopular positions, most recently as the only member of the state Senate to vote against a bill calling for chemical castration of two-time child molesters. Like Churchill, he switched political parties, ditching the Grand Old Party to become a Democrat in the mid-1980s, after which he was swiftly appointed chair of the senate’s Democratic Caucus.
“The Republican party was way too reactionary — on abortion, and women’s and labor issues,” he says. “Also, I came from a district that was 17 percent Republican, that’s all.”
Even before he became a Democrat, Marks championed progressive causes to such an extent that he earned the nickname “best Democrat in the Republican party.”
In 1963, while still a Republican, he was the only member of his party in the state Assembly to support passage of the Fair Housing Act. Elected to the Senate in 1967, he helped establish the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and to remove anti-gay sodomy laws from the books.
In addition to his loyalty to progressive causes, Marks is known for his dedication to causes that concern Jews.
He cites his participation in legislative fights for the state’s hate-crimes legislation and laws protecting Jewish ritual slaughter, as well as a measure prohibiting the state from doing business with companies complying with the Arab boycott of Israel.
But even as he prepares to retire, Marks’ political dealings may be far from over.
After assisting her husband’s political career for years, Mark’s wife, Carolene, is branching out on her own and running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which will have six seats up for grabs come November.
As she gears up for the election, her husband is behind her all the way. “I’m making many calls all the time, going to lots of meetings,” he says.
An economist who has worked for both the State Department and the United Nations, Carolene Marks has long been itching to tackle politics. “But I didn’t want to run while he was in office,” she says, referring to her husband. “I thought there could be a conflict of interest.”
Now that this is no longer a problem, Carolene Marks has hit the streets of San Francisco running, turning the family dining room into a bustling paper-riddled campaign office and aggressively selling herself as the kind of supervisor the city needs. A mother of three and grandmother of three, Marks describes her platform as fiscally conservative and socially progressive “in terms of achieving dignity for all people.”
It’s a philosophy, she is quick to add, that’s firmly based in Judaism.
“I think we as Jews have a responsibility to implement our religious precepts,” says Marks, who is a board member at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El, has served as president of the San Francisco chapter of Hadassah and vice president of B’nai B’rith Women, and has been involved in AMIT women and other Jewish organizations.
As they sit in their living room talking politics on a Thursday afternoon, it is clear that respect is the foundation on which the Marks’ 41-year marriage is built. “I think we just love each other. We respect each other. My wife’s been a tremendous help to me,” Milton Marks says.
Chimes in Carolene Marks: “People just love him everywhere he goes.”