Nothing on Gavin Newsom's big scandal?

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...G4ENV8B514.DTL

02-05) 16:37 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told department heads this afternoon he is seeking counseling for alcohol abuse, sources familiar with the meeting told The Chronicle.

Oh cripes. Is this the new thing now? If he has a legitimate problem then I certainly wish him well.

[amber]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...G4ENV8B514.DTL

02-05) 16:37 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told department heads this afternoon he is seeking counseling for alcohol abuse, sources familiar with the meeting told The Chronicle.

.

Lame.
But also, damn. Now I have no hope of somehow meeting him out and taking drunken advantage of him.
He probably does drink too much, though. I mean, if you are mayor, you shouldn't really drink hardly at all.

[Rickypt]

^^something tells me Gavin's going to work on alcohol moderation and not abstinence. He owns a winery, for godsakes, doesn't he?

I have long suspected some alcohol problems. He has been seen in public quite drunk and I wonder if his noticeable declining attention to his job in the last year or so is due to hangovers.

I'm always weary of the immediate check-in to rehab whenever caught doing something, but he probably could use some help if he wants to continue his political career.

[Rickypt]

BTW, I do not get the Gavin attraction one bit. He is certainly more handsome than your average politician, but that hair is absurd!

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

BTW, I do not get the Gavin attraction one bit. He is certainly more handsome than your average politician, but that hair is absurd!

Maybe when he gets sober he'll be able to see himself more clearly in the mirror in the morning and fix it.

[amber]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

BTW, I do not get the Gavin attraction one bit. He is certainly more handsome than your average politician, but that hair is absurd!

I don't get it. What's absurd about it? It looks better than most people's hair that I see. It's all dark and thick.

[Rickypt]

Originally Posted by amber

I don't get it. What's absurd about it? It looks better than most people's hair that I see. It's all dark and thick.

It's totally gelled and slicked back. Yuk.

[amber]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

It's totally gelled and slicked back. Yuk.

I think it is so thick and lustrous that he has to do that. Besides, he's the mayor, he can't really sport the coolest new gay guy spikey front hairdo. He has to have politician/dracula hair.

[amber]

New articles today. They shed some light that Gavin has had a problem for awhile, according to some close to him. It started when his wife moved across country, apparently. But the best part of the article was about how Gavin was working in meetings with PG&E today to ostensibly make SF the greenest city. Which makes me not care even more than I didn't care before about his indiscretion. And I didn't care before because I have seen him trying, or doing, good green things before. As we all know, that is mainly what I care about. That and gay rights and things for poor people. Which is what he cares about. Or says he does. He made that rule about Safeway not double bagging b/c of the massive fill up of landfills by plastic baggage. I'm not sure of it's success, but to me, it was a big step.

I don't doubt his sincerity at all, but of course politics being what it is, I unfortunately doubt his ability to get the things done that he wants, but not through his fault, through the fault of beaurocracy and politics. Like, his thing for free WiFi for the entire city - what that does, in theory, is democratizes information, so that everyone has equal access to it, poor and rich. Of course, poor people still have to get computers, but still. I love it. That is what true equality is about, the democratization of information.
And at first I heard bad things about his homeless plan, but when i actually researched what the plan entailed, I approved, very much. At least with the info I had.

Also, I am glad he told Board of Supervisor ahole in a meeting today that he would not be resigning (guy called for him to resign. He is at odds with the board, so I am not suprised. In politics, people take any chance to unseat those they disagree with, see Clinton/Monica. Impeachment hearings, plz. PLZ!!!)

He can sleep with whoever he wants if he gets some real environmental things done, imo. If he can help this, SF, one of the very dirtiest cities/water, become greener, bless his soul. The other is just sex, this is The World and all life forms on it. Call me "immoral" but then I will have to call into question your definition of morality. Sex is natural, marriage is a man made construct. Okay, I know. You still shouldn't sleep with you're friend's wife. But I'm sure we've all "had a few" and slept with someone we shouldn't have. Also one of these articles say he is trying and said he would find a way to pay Tourk until he finds another job, even though he is no longer employed. They are having legal problems with that, now, but I hope they work it out. Tourk got $15,000/mo. for his job, they are finding trouble making paying him out of campaign funds legal. As a sidenote, how do I get this well paying job??? $15,000 a month?!? I would die. I would be so rich. I would have so much money I wouldn't know what to do with it!
Okay, money envy part over.

HOW NEWSOM DECIDED TO SEEK HELP
BACK TO WORK: He tries to focus on job, announces 2 environmental initiatives

"San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sought to get back to the business of governing on Tuesday, trumpeting a pair of environmental initiatives that are part of his push to make San Francisco the "greenest" city in the world.

But behind the scenes and all around him, the fallout from the recent revelations -- of an affair with a staff member married to a top aide and a decision to seek treatment for alcohol abuse -- continued unabated.

The mayor held a tense and "not very productive" closed-door meeting with the first elected official to call for his resignation, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, according to the supervisor.

Officials of Newsom's re-election campaign were trying to find a legal way to make good on a pledge to keep paying former campaign manager Alex Tourk, who resigned last week after confronting the mayor over his affair with Tourk's wife.

And the mayor received a public vote of confidence from ally Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein about his announced decision to seek help for a drinking problem.

"I think the mayor will solve his problem, and I wish him well," Feinstein said Tuesday, adding that she'd spoken directly with the mayor about the issue. "I intend to continue to work with him in any way I can. He will see this thing through OK."

Newsom's only public appearance was at the Academy of Art College on New Montgomery Street to promote a new energy-saving initiative. Arriving in his black town car and seeing a throng of news media members, Newsom shook his head and sarcastically told an aide, "I never knew they were so interested in this issue!"

Newsom went inside to discuss "Energy Watch" -- a partnership between the city and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. -- which he said will cost $11.5 million, most of it coming from PG&E.

The city will use the money to hire independent contractors to give free advice to owners of businesses and apartment buildings on how they can save energy. The contractors also will install the recommended energy-efficient equipment at a reduced cost.

Newsom also announced Tuesday that he has asked the city attorney to draft legislation barring commercial buildings from using old fluorescent lighting tubes and requiring them to instead install slimmer, more energy-efficient tubes.

"We've done more than anybody else, but we're playing in the margins," Newsom said of the city's Earth-friendly undertakings at the art college. "We've got a lot of plans, and I don't have much more time."

If Newsom is re-elected in November, he will have almost five more years in office.

Toward the end of the press conference, a spokeswoman for Newsom slipped him a yellow note telling him he could make his exit through a back door to "avoid the press scrum." Newsom read it and shrugged his shoulders as if to ask what good that would do.

He left through the front entrance and appeared frustrated by the attention paid by the media to his affair and alcohol use. One reporter asked him if he would ever talk further about those issues, and he replied, "You've taken liberty with the question."

Back at City Hall, Newsom met with McGoldrick, a political foe on the Board of Supervisors who had called Monday for the mayor to resign, according to McGoldrick and the mayor's press secretary, Peter Ragone.

"It was not very productive," McGoldrick said. "He expressed anger that I was asking him to resign. He felt that I was picking on him. I felt that someone should be tough and say the emperor has no clothes."

McGoldrick said he got the meeting with the mayor only after asking for it repeatedly on Monday. But the two men failed to settle their differences during the 10-minute session.

"He said he felt that I was kicking him while he was down," McGoldrick said. "I said, 'The problem is you are portraying yourself as the victim.' He said, 'I'm asking for forgiveness.' I said, 'You're asking for forgetfulness.' He said, 'I'm not going to resign.' "

Also on Tuesday, Newsom's campaign lawyer, Jim Sutton, was trying to determine whether it would be legal to pay Tourk out of Newsom's campaign fund, according to Eric Jaye, Newsom's chief political strategist.

On Friday, The Chronicle reported that a lawyer for Tourk had gone to City Hall to work out an agreement with the mayor under which Tourk would continue to be paid out of the re-election campaign account after resigning as campaign manager while he looked for another job.

But, since then, John St. Croix, director of the city's Ethics Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, said it isn't legal to pay somebody not to work out of campaign funds -- unless there was an employment contract signed in advance calling for such a severance package.

Tourk "left through no fault of his own and has a mortgage and a child to take care of," Jaye said, referring to Tourk's decision to quit after learning of Newsom's affair with his wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk. At the time of the affair, Rippey-Tourk was Newsom's appointments secretary, and Tourk was his deputy chief of staff. He later went on to manage the Newsom re-election campaign.

"He hasn't been paid yet ... he won't be paid until we figure it out," Jaye said, noting that Tourk has earned $15,000 monthly as campaign manager since September.

Tourk declined to comment directly. A spokesman for him, Sam Singer, said Tourk has an agreement with Newsom that he will be paid until he finds a job.

The Board of Supervisors held its first regular meeting on Tuesday since news of the sex scandal broke.

Many of Newsom's political adversaries on the board have said for months that he is his own worst political enemy -- but had little to say about the mayor's conduct in the legislative chambers.

The only words were a quip from Supervisor Tom Ammiano about the mayor's announced plans to seek treatment for alcohol abuse from Mimi Silbert of the Delancey Street Foundation.

Ammiano was initially poking fun at new Supervisor Ed Jew, who had had difficulty getting his microphone to function during past meetings.

"I want to congratulate Supervisor Jew in having his microphone working," Ammiano said. "You see it's every little step -- not 12 steps. All right."

Eff you, Ammiano. There are other articles about this same subject from different slants, in today's SF Chron. The other one I read was more about his drinking thing, how he would go to such and such after work, and have glasses of white wine, basically starting after his ex wife moved across the country.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NGR1O07N91.DTL

[Rickypt]

I think the way the SF Chronicle is overdoing this story and the reaction from petty Board of Supes is pretty atrocious. And making me sympathetic towards Gavin, which is pretty funny.

And I've got MAJOR dirt on Ammiano, so he is the last person who should be acting moralistic.