S.F. mayor rides wave of popularity into election

SAN FRANCISCO -- In his first term, Mayor Gavin Newsom divorced his wife, owned up to an alcohol problem, appeared at an event where his underage girlfriend was drinking and admitted to an affair with his campaign manager's wife.

He infuriated conservatives — granted, a rare breed here — by not only approving gay marriages but also celebrating them in his City Hall office. And he may be the mayor remembered for losing the city's beloved pro football 49ers if the team makes good on its threat to move to Santa Clara.

So why, as the 40-year-old former restaurant and wine shop owner runs for re-election today, do more than 70% of voters give him high marks while he faces only token opposition?

"This has been an unprecedented era of extremely high approval ratings that seem to be resistant to any sort of scandal or concern voters have about the direction of the city," says David Binder, a San Francisco pollster. "It's really amazing."

If Newsom is a second-term shoo-in, can he rise above personal issues and morph into an attractive Democratic candidate for statewide office in 2012 after he's filled the term limits as mayor?

He can lay claim to popular policy initiatives — universal health care, restricting homeless welfare, strengthening the city's "green" development credentials, reducing gang violence — that could resonate with voters across California.

At times City Hall resembled a soap opera. Newsom and his wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, host of a cable TV crime show, separated early in his first term when she took a job in New York. An on-again, off-again bicoastal marriage ended in divorce, and she married furniture fortune heir Eric Villency last year.

A year ago, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that photos had surfaced showing his 20-year-old girlfriend, hostess and model Brittanie Mountz, holding a wine glass during a shopping mall opening that the mayor attended. Newsom's office said he and Mountz hadn't attended together.

In February, after published reports that he'd been seen intoxicated around the city, Newsom sought treatment for a drinking problem. Just days before, he had come clean about the affair with his former appointments secretary, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, wife of campaign manager Alex Tourk. Tourk confronted the mayor and resigned.

'No one to blame but myself'

The affair was a "big stumble," says Bruce Cain, a University of California, Berkeley political science professor. "There are a lot of women in the Democratic Party in California, more women than men. A lot of people don't want to get into the problems we had in the '90s with Democratic candidates who mess up their records with personal problems."

Newsom has been straightforward. "It was my own actions, so I take full account," he said in an interview. "I have no one to blame but myself."

Often mentioned as Newsom's future competition is Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles' charismatic Latino mayor. But in the last year, Villaraigosa, too, suffered from revelations over an affair.

Newsom's poll numbers hit a slight bump but Villaraigosa's "took a significant hit," Binder says. "It was more of a shock to the Los Angeles community."

"It just seems like scandal is so omnipresent now that it's not going to stand out like Newsom is any different or weird," says Rich DeLeon, emeritus political science professor at San Francisco State University.

Gay marriage may be Newsom's most enduring first-term legacy, even though the courts struck it down. "At the end of the day, if that's all I've ever done, I'm very proud of it," Newsom says.

The city's murder rate remains unacceptable, he says. "I've been immeasurably frustrated by my own inability as mayor to do something significant to curb it."

Initiatives to "guarantee" public school students access to four-year colleges and rebuild public housing are on his second-term agenda, Newsom says. "I don't know a big city in the country that isn't vexed with the realities of our public educational institutions and trying to deal with the growing divide there," he says. "I'd like to think we're raising the bar."

'More of a regular person'

Cain thinks Newsom's gay rights support won't squelch his political future. "It's not a killer in the Democratic Party at all," he says. "It's a respectable position, even if it's not a majority position."

Newsom may adopt the strategy of the last mayor to achieve higher office beyond San Francisco, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. State Democratic convention delegates booed her in 1990 when she announced her support for the death penalty. "It established her as independent of liberal orthodoxy," Cain says.

Binder says the mayor has been savvy in navigating traditional San Francisco schisms — downtown vs. neighborhood groups, business vs. labor, renters vs. homeowners. "Because of that he hasn't really made any enemies."

San Francisco voters like Newsom because "he comes across as more of a regular person," Binder says. He's also seen as something of a policy wonk, a mayor who's "always had this litany of policies."

Look for Newsom to start positioning himself to run for governor in 2010, DeLeon says. "I predict in his second term he'll move even more to the center and soft-pedal, or even mute, his initiatives in cultural policy, gay rights," DeLeon says.

"There are people who say his popularity is wide but not deep."