What's in His closet?
The Picture of Gavin Newsom
S.F. Mayor's office
October 10, 2007
One summer day back in 2002, then Supervisor Gavin Newsom walked into an old warehouse in Hunters Point, accompanied by an aide, and delivered a pep talk to a group of city-funded street cleaners. Depending on who you ask, the event either signaled the start of an election conspiracy, or amounted to nothing more than an ordinary day in the life of a public official. Either way, these welfare-to-work employees would end up walking precincts for the wealthy supervisor a year later, with the city's Department of Public Works picking up the tab.
In December, 2003, Newsom edged out Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez in a tight race, becoming San Francisco's youngest mayor in history. Thereafter, some of the street cleaners filed complaints, claiming that DPW Deputy Director Mohammed Nuru, a Newsom supporter, warned them earlier that fall that if his candidate didn't win the election, they would likely all lose their jobs. Nuru is a former executive director of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, the nonprofit group that occupied the warehouse and employed the crew. SLUG was started by progressives in the 1980's to promote community gardens in the city. The organization later transformed into a contract service agency whose principle income was derived from providing low-skilled labor for city agencies, including DPW.
In sworn testimony, the workers said their supervisors threatened them with the loss of pay if they didn't attend Newsom campaign appearances, cast absentee ballots, walk precincts on election day, and help post campaign signs. That prompted City Attorney Dennis Herrera to launch an inquiry into the allegations. Yet both Nuru and Newsom were cleared of any wrongdoing.
In fact, the only casualties of this episode turned out to be the workers themselves. Shortly after the complaints were filed, the city controller banned SLUG from servicing any more city contracts. As an immediate consequence of the ban, all the group's welfare-to-work employees were terminated and Newsom's famous campaign slogan, “Care not Cash” for the homeless, took on a whole new meaning.
This November, the mayor is up for re-election. However, this time he doesn't need street cleaners walking his precincts, since no major candidate has come forward to challenge him. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, negotiations are underway to donate some of Newsom's staggering $6 million dollar campaign chest to a scholarship fund at S.F. State University.
Perhaps in the giddiness of the moment, in September, the mayor sent a memorandum to hundreds of city agency heads, asking for a letter of resignation that would take effect next January, when he will officially begin his second term. It's a roundabout way of securing a loyalty oath from subordinates and not exactly standard procedure in city government, which is why many of the targetted executives lodged protests with the city attorney. In addition, the union which represents 1,000 city managers has refused to endorse Newsom for mayor, citing competency issues and his lack of overall engagement in the day-to-day operation of city government. One union member interviewed praised some of Newsom's feats during the first term but added, “it is very hard to know what it is he's truly trying to accomplish, other than ... I can't even call them initiatives because an initiative implies organization. The plans seem to change week to week."
Still, the Chronicle noted that Newsom enjoys high approval ratings from most city residents and has the endorsement of the firefighters, police and other unions. This despite a series of bombshell revelations last spring, including an admission of alcoholism and a steamy affair with his appointments secretary. At that time, it was his campaign manager - the husband of the secretary - who announced his resignation. And while the mayor himself was checking into a rehab clinic, the city attorney's office opened yet another investigation into allegations of wrongdoing. This time the mayor authorized $10,000 in paid leave for Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the ex-lover, who took nine weeks off in order to attend a substance abuse program before quitting her position.
Again, the mayor was exonerated of violating any city laws.
In reviewing all these intriguing developments, one can't help but be reminded of the classic Oscar Wilde story, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it, a wealthy young bachelor poses for a portrait one afternoon with a peculiar sculpture sitting on the mantel behind him. While the artist paints, a friend explains to Gray the occult power of the object to grant any wish. Gray takes advantage of the opportunity and wishes that he always remain as young and virile as he is on that day.
From the movie The Picture of Dorian Gray
For the next 30 years, Wilde's protagonist does indeed retain the boyishly pleasant face and sleek figure captured in the portrait. Yet whenever he commits a particularly grave indiscretion - the first, for instance, causing the suicide of his fiancé - the portrait of him grows a notch darker and more hideous.
In Gavin Newsom's case, the parallels are striking. His good looks and bachelor status have made him a national celebrity ever since he first stumbled onto the scene in 1996. And the wish-granting object matches the role that billionaire Gordon Getty has played in Newsom's life. Getty, who is the son of the miserly oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, has financed nearly all of Newsom's businesses and election races.
Both the billionaire and his trust administrator, Judge William Newsom (Gavin's father) are Republicans. However, in a town where 80 percent of voters register as Democrats, it's not surprising that the Getty has backed people like Dianne Feinstein, Willie Brown and Nancy Pelosi. (He also contributed to the presidential campaigns of Gore and Kerry.) In 1992, at the age of 25, Newsom opened his first business, the PlumpJack Wine Shop. PlumpJack is the name of an opera written by Getty, based on the slovenly liar and drunkard Jack Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry IV.
In 1996, then Mayor Willie Brown appointed Newsom to the Board of Supervisors when a slot became vacant between elections. In 2001, he married Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Victoria's Secret model and local prosecutor who would later work for the conservative cable channel Court TV. After her divorce from Newsom five years later, she became the host of The Lineup, which airs on the equally conservative Fox News Channel. Apparently the 24 hour network of the G.O.P. went to some lengths to revamp the show for Guilfoyle, even though her ex-hubby had recently authorized the city clerk to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Many election oberservers felt President Bush triumphed in 2004 using gay marriage as a key wedge issue.
In short, despite so much circumstantial evidence of conservative ties, Newsom manages to navigate around his home turf - the gay-friendly, liberal Democratic city of San Francisco - with nary a stain of suspicion. In the Oscar Wilde story, Gray makes regular trips to the dark side of town in order to satisfy his lust in a house of prostitution, at the same time cutting deals with criminals to further his personal ends. And no one in the character's elite social circle ever catches on.
This seedy underworld analogy merits further discussion. Newsom recently appointed the DPW's Mohammad Nuru to serve on a committee to pick the next director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. The Authority has a long history of corruption that includes pocketing funds intended for the maintenance of the city's low-income housing projects. Earlier this year, a federal official identified a housing project in the Bayview area as among the worst he'd seen in the United States. Yet Newsom has appointed the same official implicated in the SLUG scandal to help pick the next housing chief.
In another episode, last spring the mayor intervened after the Taxi Commission voted to fire that agency's executive director, Heidi Machen, citing issues of mismanagement and her poor judgment in the hiring of subordinates. In particular, Machen tapped as her second in command her longtime companion, Tristan Bettencourt, a former taxi driver convicted of felony burglary. According to court records, Bettencourt picked up a woman and her children at their Marina District home in 1989, and after dropping them off at a local mall, returned to ransack the house. He was apprehended when a neighbor called the police.
Machen posted bail for Bettencourt after the burglary. At the time of her termination, Bettencourt's wages were being garnished to pay damages in another case inovlving a computer scam.
Incredibly, Newsom responded to this affair by sacking two of the board members voting to remove Machen from her position. He then appointed replacements who quickly moved to reinstate her. But perhaps the kicker of the story is that Machen's previous job had been working as a legislative aide for Newsom while he was supervisor of… the Marina district. It's here, in the neighborhood of that 1989 burglary, that the mayor enjoys his highest popularity.
The Taxi Commission represents a drop in the bucket in the city bureacracy, of course. Especially when you compare it to the Municipal Transit Agency, or MTA, which operates Muni and the parking division. In January, 2006, the mayor's office chose Nathaniel Ford, the former head of Atlanta's transit agency, MARTA, to preside over MTA's $800 million annual budget. Ford is a former conductor on the New York subway system with no formal post-secondary education other than a bachelor's degree from a college that allows students to substitute work hours for credits. Six months into his new stint here, the San Francisco Business Times reported that Georgia state authorities were investigating Ford and other former executives over millions of dollars in incidental expenses logged at a time when MARTA was teetering on bankruptcy.
Among the anomalies, Ford and his secretaries racked up $150,000 in charges on two credit cards which the MARTA's governing board never authorized, the story revealed. The tabs included meals and drinks at expensive restaurants, a $454 purchase at a golf pro shop, $335 in clothing from the Men's Wearhouse, and $58 for a dental visit. At the time the articles was filed, Ford had reimbursed $11,000 to the agency but refused to be interviewed about the matter.
“I think he's exactly right for the job" MTA board member Tom Nolan told the Business Times, when asked about the revelations. "If something happened back there, I don't know how much that would impact us at all." While no allegations of mispent funds have been made against Ford in San Francisco to date, he earns $300,000 annually, plus the possibility of a 10 percent annual bonus for meeting work deadlines set by the board. Meanwhile, analysts are predicting the current Muni deficit of $100 million or more will likely result in another fare increase soon. In MARTA's case, the base fare was raised to $1.75 during Ford's tenure. See our article, The Trouble with Muni, for more on this.
Due to his mostly free ride in the press and the lack of formidable challengers in the mayor's race, Newsom hasn't really had to account for the unsavory cast of characters he's chosen over the years to serve as his proximity group. Like Dorian Gray, his enemies seem never to lay a glove on him. In the novel, the aggrieved fiancé's brother stalks Gray but is accidentally shot dead on a firing range. Supervisor Chris Daly appears the likely match here. In June, he publicly castigated Newsom during a budget meeting for cutting $200,000 from a substance abuse program. Daly claimed the mayor had lied when he said there was no money to cover the costs and suggested Newsom himself may have used cocaine.
Given the brouhaha of last spring, the latter claim didn't appear to be much of a stretch. The Getty protege is known to run with the high-flying celebrity circuit, a demographic which considers the white powder indispensable to any night on the town. As for Daly's first claim that Newsom had lied about available funds in the city treasury, a quick check of the facts discloses that he included in this year's budget $500,000 for a new small business support center. More than twice the amount cut from the substance abuse program, the new agency would effectively duplicates services already provided by the federal government and other city programs. In his 2007-2008 budget, Newsom also awarded an unprecedented 25-30 percent across the board pay raise for police officers and added 250 new law enforcement positions to boot. This despite criticism that the SFPD had yet to address its costly practice of assigning uniformed staff to undertake clerical and other jobs normally reserved for more affordable civilian employees.
Again, local politicos and most of the local media outlets circled the wagons around the mayor after Daly's emperor's clothes speech. Senator Feinstein joined the assault, demanding punishment for the supervisor, given his failure to observe proper decorum in chambers. Board President Aaron Peskin responded by removing Daly from the budget committee. (It's worth noting that during her own time as mayor, Feinstein was tainted by the sensational if tardy arrest of her longtime choice for city administrator, Roger Boas. Throughout his tenure in office, Boas had paid a pimp to hook him up with a series of underage prostitutes .)
Clearly, the concept of a proportional response to wrongdoing has never been a mainstay in the golden state's most colorful metropolis. Feinstein herself ascended the mayoral throne following the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the city's first openly gay supervisor, back in 1978. Both men were killed by a third supervisor, Dan White, who snuck into city hall through an open window, packing a revolver. A former police officer, White snuffed out the lives of two progressive leaders in the course of ten minutes, yet paid for that crime with a manslaughter conviction and less than seven years in prison. During that interval, Gordon Getty and the rest of the city's conservative base helped Feinstein establish her lock on city government. By some coincidence, both she and Speaker Pelosi are the wives of San Francisco investment bankers.
Today, the former owner of Plumjack Wine Shop marches on to another four years at the helm of a city experiencing its biggest building boon since the 1906 earthquake. Given the eventual demise of the protagonist in Wilde's psychological thriller, it will be interesting to see how Gavin Newsom's remaining chapters play out.
Rosemary Regello
Copyright 2007 TheCityEdition.com