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Tom Ammiano, a Democrat , is a member of the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors . He represents District 9, encompassing parts of the Mission District and the Bernal Heights neighborhoods. He was elected to the Board in 1994 , and re-elected in 1998 , 2000 and 2004 . Ammiano lost in the December 14 , 1999 San Francisco mayoral Run-off Election to incumbent Willie Brown . Ammiano will be ineligible to be re-elected to the Board of Supervisors in the November 2008 election, since he will have served two consecutive four-year terms. Ammiano grew up in Montclair, New Jersey . He got a Bachelor's Degree in Communications from Seton Hall University in 1963 and a Master's Degree in Special Education from San Francisco State University in 1965 . He taught English to children in South Vietnam as part of a Quaker program until 1968 , when he left the country shortly after the Tet Offensive . Ammiano is a former Public School Teacher and Gay activist. In 1975 , he became the first gay public school teacher in San Francisco to make his sexual orientation a matter of public knowledge. He was the main architect of the city's Domestic Partners Ordinance, which provided equal benefits to employees and their unmarried domestic partners of companies who do business with the city. He is also a Stand-up Comedian . In 1980 and 1988 , Ammiano ran for the San Francisco Board of Education and lost. In 1990 , Ammiano became the first publicly gay person elected to the school board. He was subsequently elected vice-president of the school board in 1991 , then president in 1992 . In 1999 , Ammiano ran for mayor in a close race that garnered national and international media coverage. In the general election, he ran as a write-in candidate, galvanizing the city's progressive electorate. During his historic campaign, he was featured on the covers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly , the city's two biggest Alternative Weeklies . He finished in second place, challenging incumbent Willie Brown in a run-off election. Brown defeated Ammiano by 59 to 40%. Ammiano ran for mayor again in 2003 , but didn't get enough votes to make the run-off after candidate Matt Gonzalez joined the race and split the progressive vote with Ammiano. Ammiano was in a 16-year domestic partnership with a fellow schoolteacher, Tim Curbo, who died of complications from AIDS in 1994 . REFERENCES
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