Margaret Heckler

Um, I ran in a very bad year in 1980 and barely won.

I had a tough opponent, former Congresswoman Margaret Heckler, in 1982, and I won big because it was a good Democratic year.

Last year, I won by 11 points in a terrible year.

Um, but I think I would've won.

Since he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981, he became one of the first and most outspoken advocates for people with AIDS.

He's testified before a congressional subcommittee and has met with Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler.

He helped organize the National Association of People with AIDS.

He has appeared on ABC Nightline, Phil Donahue, PBS, and on the cover of Newsweek's Gay America issue.

AIDS is not just a disease of gay men.

People with AIDS are also women, heterosexual, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, infants, Haitians, and recipients of blood product transfusions.

Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, called AIDS the number one priority of Reagan's Health Administration, but many of us feel that in Washington it's still business as usual while we are dying.

5,000 Americans have AIDS, nearly half of which have died.

Back in 1985, Reagan was president, and if you can believe it, a Republican administration did this.

The government put out something called the Heckler Report, named for Margaret Heckler, Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, and she was actually really good at it.

And what that report found was almost too plain to say out loud.

Black and minority Americans were dying at rates that added up to 60,000 excess deaths per year.

And, uh, and then that was really, really big.

Uh, and, uh, Margaret Heckler's press conference in April, 1984.

Uh, and Robert Gallo, uh, you know, he was there presented there and they said he discovered the problem because of AIDS.

It was one of his viruses.