As you may have heard, San Francisco Mayor [tag]Gavin Newsom[/tag] has become mired in a tawdry mess — he had an [tag]affair[/tag] with a female staffer who just happened to be married to one of his closest advisors and friends. Newsom has fessed up and apologized, his friend (who was going to be the manager of Newsom’s re-election campaign) has quit, and the whole sordid story has offered enough gossip for a trashy soap opera.
One of the more common questions in the media, however, is how this will affect Newsom, widely considered a rising star in Democratic politics, if he decides to run for higher office.
Whether voters will forgive him is another matter. Even in famously permissive San Francisco, news that the popular young mayor had cuckolded a close friend left the public reeling — and Newsom’s political future in doubt. Until now, Newsom, with approval ratings around 70 percent, had been considered a shoo-in for re-election in November. And despite controversy over his move three years ago to legalize gay marriage, Newsom, 39, was still considered one of the country’s hottest mayors and a rising star in the Democratic Party. For now, Newsom has no credible opponent for his re-election bid, even though several city supervisors were reportedly licking their chops at the prospect of Newsom’s downfall. The bigger problem may come down the road, when Newsom is expected to square off against Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, another young Democratic star — for either the U.S. Senate seat held by Diane Feinstein, now 73, or for governor, when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term expires in 2010.
Indeed, CNN hosted a lengthy discussion on Thursday afternoon between Wolf Blitzer, James Carville, and former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) about whether Newsom’s affair with a married woman is a “career-ender.”
I’m not even going to try to justify Newsom’s behavior; I find it wrong and offensive. I am comfortable, however, arguing that the talk about Newsom’s career being over strikes me rather silly.
Indeed, in the exact same CNN program in which they mulled over Newsom’s future, the Situation Room featured a lengthy puff piece about Newt Gingrich — without any mention of the former Speaker’s frequent adultery and family problems.
An article I wrote several months ago for the Washington Monthly seems particularly apropos in this context.
Now, just a few years after infidelity was considered a dealbreaker for a presidential candidate, the party that presents itself as the arbiter of virtue may field an unprecedented two-timing trifecta.
McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, “aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.” McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife’s family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure. It’s possible that the age of the offense and McCain’s charmed relationship with the press will pull him through again, but Giuliani and Gingrich may face a more difficult challenge. Both conducted well-documented affairs in the last decade — while still in public office.
Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with “groping in the window at Macy’s.” In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.
But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.” (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.'” Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
Mayor Giuliani can march with his mistress in a parade and then, shortly thereafter, launch a presidential campaign. Mayor Newsom has an affair with an aide, and his career is over?
I realize there may be a double-standard, and Democrats’ affairs capture the media’s attention more than Republicans’ affairs, but there’s no way Newsom’s future could be finished, could it?