Plus, just 5 years previously NYC was broke, and it was still acting under various federal and state restrictions on spending. SF shared no such constraints.

As for Reagan, he pumped money immediately into the problem — and didn’t mention a word about what no one knew much about because, well, what was he going to say? “We’ve put $100 million into research immediately.”? And this speech would have done what?

I’m not sure anyone followed him in the sixties, especially since he didn’t get into any office until 1969 (he was only a party activist before that for a few years, also, what exactly was a “good” record on Gay Rights back then? No one was speaking up for us at the time, so it’s pretty disengenious to complain about his “spotty” record in a time when we had no support in the public forum). And yes, he was behind a “crackdown” on gay men in Greenwich Villiage, if you believe his backing the NY Public Health department’s attempts to deal with the AIDS crisis by closing bath houses. And alas, it wasn’t just the gays that had their sex clubs closed, they closed all the straight ones too, due to the Anti-Discrimination law he had enacted in his second term.

He get’s blamed for not doing enough, then he gets blamed for doing too much.