Sometimes, if somebody went to the esteemed Aqua restaurant in San Francisco for a dish to go, they left with an order of black cod or ahi tuna tartare.
In 2006, the then-38-year-old Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, left with the variety of its 19-year-old hostess, Brittanie Mountz.
The very fact Mountz was 20 years youthful didn’t seem to register with the mayor on the time, with him proudly displaying her on his arm on the opening gala of the San Francisco Symphony that September.
“He makes a whole lot of dangerous decisions,” an editor at a neighborhood paper, recalling the incident, instructed ABC. “He’s relationship this woman who’s barely out of faculty. He lets his hormones take over.”
Or maybe Newsom did notice relationship a teen wasn’t turning into of a metropolis’s prime political chief, as Mountz’s age on MySpace — the most well liked social media web site of the time — mysteriously morphed from 19 to 26 whereas they had been relationship, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
On the $1,600-a-head symphony gala pink carpet, Newsom described his teenage date as a speechwriter, sportswriter and secretary. One of many retailers masking the occasion known as Mountz a “youthful blonde and Keira Knightley doppelganger.”
On the time they met, Newsom had just-divorced his first spouse, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Quickly after the Symphony coming-out, Newsom and Mountz appeared collectively in a San Francisco Chronicle photograph montage of society bigs at a black-tie dinner dance placed on by native socialite Dede Wilsey.
By the point of their subsequent public encounter, a shopping center opening, Newsom’s folks already appeared eager to place distance between them.
When SF Gate enquired about photos of Mountz showing to consuming from a wine glass on the opening, a spokesperson brushed it off, saying: “If she was consuming, the mayor didn’t discover,” ensuring so as to add they’d attended the occasion individually. Images of Mountz on the occasion had been later taken down, in keeping with a Gawker article.
In traditional San Francisco vogue, native liberals appeared extra irked by Mountz’s politics than the actual fact she was half Newsom’s age.
When it emerged she was a registered Republican, questions had been requested. “How dare he?” a neighborhood celebration member fumed to ABC. “He is aware of the best way to decide ’em. You may depend the younger feminine Republicans on this city on one hand.”
Nevertheless, others felt the connection was a extra pivotal second.
“The years after Guilfoyle, [Newsom] was slightly checked out; he was extra absent in Metropolis Corridor than many San Francisco mayors are,” Chris Daly, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2001 till 2011, instructed The Put up.
Talking of Newsom’s time with Mountz, Daly — whose views had been usually left of Newsom’s — stated “It was a gotcha second.”
He felt it was necessary sufficient to supply an opposition advert mimicking the occasion, utilizing sock puppets, portrayed with them “wanting down from their citadel on the needy rabble beneath.”
Newsom, now 58, was anointed by means of California’s political ranks, going from mayor to lieutenant governor in 2011 then turning into governor in 2019, a time period which is able to finish in January 2027.
Nevertheless, it’s only now he notes, in his new memoir “Younger Man in a Hurry,” that: “I considered myself as a single man who occurred to be mayor. Had my head been on straight I’d have seen it the opposite manner round.”
He definitely appeared to be in a rush to overlook Mountz, as she doesn’t make the pages of the upcoming e-book. A spokesperson for Newsom’s workplace tried to minimize their relationship as a mere “friendship.”
Newsom additionally brushed it off saying they solely “went on a number of dates,” to The Instances.
Mountz didn’t return a request for remark, however now works underneath a unique identify as a therapist, specializing in, amongst different issues, “males’s points.”
On a biographical web page for her providers, she writes: “I got here into the sector once I was 19 years previous” – proper round her time with Newsom – “throughout undergrad, and have been dedicated to relational therapeutic work ever since.”
Congressman Kevin Kiley (R-CA), who has spoken out in opposition to Newsom, views his omission of the relationship from his story as a scarcity of transparency.
“It doesn’t come as any shock that the governor would attempt to create a self-serving narrative on any matter that’s totally at odds with actuality,” Kiley instructed The Put up.
“He’s demonstrated a rare capability for delusion and denial.”
In his e-book, Newsom admits to different lapses of judgement, together with his affair with Ruby Rippey Gibney, his appointments secretary as mayor. She was married to his marketing campaign supervisor and good pal, Alex Tourk, on the time. Newsom admitted the affair in 2007, after Tourk resigned.
Newsom, who had a “squeaky-clean picture” within the early 00s, additionally writes about his relationship with Sofia Milos, claiming he ditched the “Sopranos” and “CSI: Miami” actress on recommendation of his pal oil magnate Gordon Getty.
Milos instructed The Put up: “We selected to half methods and have since moved on with our lives.”
Newsom additionally shortly moved on from Mountz, being arrange with filmmaker Jennifer Siebel — who would turn out to be his second spouse — on a blind date in October 2006.
Nevertheless it wasn’t their closing encounter. Mountz acquired a job as a reporter for a neighborhood publication, Profit, and ended up masking the red-carpet of a Will Smith film “The Pursuit of Happyness” on December 8, 2006, which Newsom and Seibel attended.
Upon recognizing Mountz, Newsom gave her shoulder a pat and kissed her cheek, in keeping with a neighborhood report. He then headed off into the theater, leaving her on the opposite facet of the velvet rope which divides the general public and press from the privileged VIPs and stars.
