San Francisco's gay community has achieved a remarkable level of political power since the late Supervisor Harvey Milk became the first out candidate to win elective office in 1977. Over the last three decades, gays and lesbians have won city races for supervisor, treasurer, school board and community college board. Caucasian, Asian, and Latino out candidates have all celebrated successful campaigns.

Glaringly missing from the list are gay black politicians. Only one openly gay black man is known to have run for a city office, and only three out African American lesbians have mounted campaigns.

None were successful. Two of the candidates lost their mayoral appointed seats: school board member Heather Hiles in 2005 and college board member Andrea Shorter in 1998.

Pat Norman is believed to be the first out black lesbian to run for political office when she ran for supervisor in 1984. She lost.

''Can you pick up a common theme?'' asked Norman. ''Black lesbians apparently are really very frightening to people.'' Twenty-three years later the city's LGBT African American community is still waiting for one of its own to win public office.

''I have heard people talking about the desire of wanting to see a black gay representative in the city,'' said Perry Rhodes III, a gay black man who co-chairs the HIV Prevention Planning Council. ''The rise of the proper candidate has yet to be seen.'' Why no gay black candidate has yet to come out on top is increasingly being asked, not just by African American leaders, but also by LGBT political leaders in general.

''I will tell you there is a great deal of discussion among a lot of black LGBT leaders. We are seriously asking that question,'' said Julius Turman, the first black co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. ''We are seriously looking around our community and spotlighting some of the work we see people doing in the business sector, nonprofit sector, and community leadership. We are asking why can't that success and hard work transcend into electability?''

Andrea Shorter Scott Wiener, the openly gay president of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a past Alice Club cochair, said it is not due to a dearth of qualified people that the black LGBT community lacks representation. Gay politicos in recent years have tried to groom black leaders for public office, he said, by recruiting them to run for a seat on the political party's central committees or school board.

''Definitely, there are great people in our community who are African American who could and should run for office,'' said Wiener. ''In cultivating people for office, you need to start at the most grassroots level and you work your way up.'' The strategy, so far, has had mixed results.

''Several of us have tried to recruit people to run for DCCC as a way to really get your foot in the door as a candidate. We haven't always been as successful as we have wanted to be,''said Wiener.

Former AIDS czar Bill Barnes, now an aide to state Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco), successfully ran for a seat on the Democratic County Central Committee in 2004. He is believed to be the second out black candidate to win a race in San Francisco. Simeon White, a gay black man, won election to the DCCC in the late 1980s.

[Juanita Owens, who won election in 1996 to the school board and has the distinction of being the first lesbian of color to serve as president of an elected school board in California, has at times been mistakenly identified as African American. She is part Portuguese and Native American.]

''When I first ran in 2002 there were no blacks, gay or straight,'' on the DCCC said Barnes, who has now won three consecutive DCCC elections. ''Currently, I am the only black person on the central committee.''

In 2004 he mounted an unsuccessful bid for District 5 supervisor. To date, only one out person of color, Susan Leal, a lesbian who is Latina, has won a seat on the Board of Supervisors, noted Barnes. It is a track record he would like to see change.

''All the other gay supervisors have been white since Harvey got elected,'' said Barnes. ''I think it is great if they want to put together a campaign to get a gay African American person to run. I would like to see someone run in the Bayview. There are lots of LGBT couples buying houses in the Bayview and Potrero Hill.''

Rhodes surmised that many blacks are reluctant to enter political life because as candidates they must overcome stereotypes based both on their race and sexual orientation. ''You have to have an amazing balance between your black identity and your gay identity and bring those together. It is an incredible challenge,'' said Rhodes.

Norman faced such obstacles during her supervisor races. After her defeat in 1984, Norman ran two more times in 1986 and 1988. In those days there were no district races; candidates ran citywide. Each time she garnered more votes and more support. ''I did have some really good numbers when I was running from the Castro. But it was not enough,''she said. Some voters ruled her out because of the color of her skin, others due to her sexuality. Alex Randolph

''I sat in one of the Castro restaurants during the '86 or '88 campaign next to these gay white men. They were talking to each other and one guy said, 'I am not voting for any nigger lesbian.' That was amazing to me because, you know, I have been around a long time," said the 66-year-old Norman. ''I do know those words are used. I was just so surprised.''

Resistance to her campaign also came from within the city's black neighborhoods. It also didn't help, she said, that at the time her lover was a white woman.

''It was a mixed bag, I would say I found many of the gay community not being open to having a person of color, a gay or lesbian person of color,'' said Norman, who is also part Native American, belonging to the Muskogee or Creek Indian tribe.''The black community actually worked against me. I won't say everybody in the black community, but there were certain people who were leaders at that time who made my life pretty uncomfortable.''

Norman did go on to serve as president of both the fire and police commissions. She currently sits on the Human Rights Commission. More than any other characteristic, Norman chalked up her consecutive defeats to her being "just too radical.'' ''I also had a progressive agenda and that worked against me as well," she said. ''Most of the time whoever gets in as a supervisor has to be centrist.''

When Norman looked at her votes in black neighborhoods, she found the results dispiriting. She said a black gay candidate today would still have trouble pulling support.

''It almost feels like they would vote for anybody, maybe even a Ku Klux Klan member, and not support the lesbian and gay lifestyle,'' she said. ''People have a long way to go before they get over their homophobia. People do believe the myth there are no such things as gay or lesbian black folks. There is that resistance to the reality.''

Former Mayor Willie Brown appointed Shorter to the college board in 1996. When she ran two years later to retain her seat, she too, ran into reluctance among some voters to cast a ballot for an out black woman.

But unlike Norman, she lost by only a few percentage points. The race was so tight on election night, Shorter did not know the outcome for several days.

''It was a nail-biter. The story had a sort of surprise ending. I think the bets were on and the expectation was I would come ahead. But I missed the mark by a couple thousand votes,''recalled Shorter, now into her second term on the Commission of the Status of Women.

Her defeat to Robert Burton, a longtime board member, had more to do with the fact it was his last time eligible to run than anything else, said Shorter. Her campaign received ''a great deal of support''from the LGBT and women's communities, and to a certain extent, the African American community, she recalled. ''I never considered either of my assets of being lesbian, being black, being a woman was ever proved to be a really great distracter or detractor rather,'' she said. ''At the same time too, I think it was definitely quite an experience to run as one of the few, if only at that time, African American queer candidates.''

Bill Barnes Attention turns to '08 Turman and other black LGBT leaders have set their sights on the 2008 election in hope of seeing one of their own be declared the winner on election night. Over the next nine months Turman said there would be a concerted effort to groom candidates to run for office.

''I think it is going to be an interesting year in many ways,'' said Turman. ''By the end of year you will start to see some names emerging. Over the next few months the question of what the city is going to look like in terms of LGBT elective office is going to change dramatically.''

The first big boost in the effort to recruit out LGBT candidates will come later this month. Zwazzi Sowo, a 2007 Rickey Williams Fellow, is hosting a retreat for black LGBT leaders as part of her fellowship project.

Sowo, the founder and volunteer executive director of the Northern California Coalition of Black Freedom Fighters, said one of her goals is to see candidates emerge not just in San Francisco next year but also within Oakland's black LGBT community.

''I would like our group to be developed to a level where it can support [Turman] and any black LGBT person who wants to step into political power,'' said Sowo. ''It is possible. Times change.'' She pointed to the electoral successes of black gay politicians like Ron Oden, the mayor of Palm Springs, and Berkeley City Council member Darryl Moore. More recently, the elections of straight black candidates like Ron Dellums as Oakland's mayor and Kamala Harris as San Francisco's district attorney show that qualified African American candidates can win, said Sowo. ''Enough of us have to get out there and say it is time for a change,'' she said.

Library Commissioner Jewelle Gomez, a black lesbian employed by the Horizons Foundation, which is overseeing the fellowship program, said the community has its work cut out for it in convincing younger people to enter into politics.

''It takes a lot of grooming to get people to understand a political career could be effective or meaningful. In general people are so disaffected. Their sense is why would I do that and put myself in that position?''said Gomez, who still has a "Norman for Supervisor" button from the '84 race. ''I haven't seen them so far yet, young queer black activists ready to jump into politics.''

The question remains; just who will jump into the political fray? No one contacted for this story said they would run for public office next year, preferring to remain as community organizers or possibly become a candidate at a later date. Barnes plans to make a fourth run for DCCC in June of 2008. Asked if he would run again for supervisor, he said, ''I am not going to rule it out but I am not working on it right now.'' Shorter also said she has not ruled out running again, but for now, she is more focused on assisting in the effort to groom other people to run.

''Right now I am more interested in the effort to really pull together a real effort for the community, to really focus on ways in which we can have a more powerful voice,'' she said. ''Not only here in San Francisco, but certainly, regionally what do we do to work together in a way that not only compels people to serve in an elected seat, but an appointed seat as well.''

One person who has been actively recruited to run for office is John Newsome, one of the founders of the anti-racism group And Castro For All. To date, he has resisted all entreaties to run for school board.

Reached in South Africa via email, Newsome said he would be interested in running ''only if there's a unique opportunity for me to move the needle on important and timely issues.'' He agreed, though, that having blacks hold political offices is a growing concern within the community. It is not enough, he said, to merely rely on someone who is gay or who is black to represent the concerns of black LGBT people.

''The best advocates for black LGBT people are other black LGBT people, as well as people from other historically marginalized groups: other people of color, white progressives, women, and transgender people,'' wrote Newsome. ''That said, electing black LGBT leaders would be less of a concern if our existing electeds could be relied upon to advocate consistently for us.''

The one person who indicated he would like to run for office is Alex Randolph, Mayor Gavin Newsom's liaison to the LGBT community and to District 8. Randolph served as campaign manager for Supervisor Bevan Dufty's successful re-election campaign.

Like Dufty, he is working out of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services and building up contacts within the city's LGBT community. Randolph could be a leading candidate to replace Dufty when he is termed out in 2011. Asked if he planned to make a bid for public office, Randolph did not rule it out.

''It is a possibility, but I haven't given it any strong thought yet,'' he said. ''When the time comes, I might, but not right now.''