Free Republic

San Francisco is facing an epic financial crisis and a potential tide-turning election. Mayor Gavin Newsom is responding with two words. See ya. Newsom swears he hasn't decided whether to leave the mayor's office and run for lieutenant governor, but that's how it looks. He's assembled a campaign team and Wednesday he just met the deadline to file a ballot statement to appear in the November voter guide. As a cold political calculation it makes sense. If he wins - and he's a big favorite - he jumps from a job that ends in 2011 to one that runs to...

"Like it or not," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his handlers made a point of not trying to electrify any crowds after Tuesday's state Supreme Court decision upholding the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. Instead, the mayor offered up a cooler, calmer message delivered over the course of three hours in individual interviews with a string of local, state and national reporters. "We just feel one-on-one offered the best opportunity to get our message out," said mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard. The sit-downs also guaranteed that there would be no repeat of Newsom's infamous, growling declaration in the City Hall...

SAN FRANCISCO - -- Mayor Gavin Newsom, attending Fleet Week festivities on the Marina Green today, lashed out at conservative critics who mocked San Francisco's consideration of a measure to ban the flight of the Navy's Blue Angels over the city during this week's celebration. He cited that criticism and reports that the city turned down a U.S. Marine request to make a television recruitment commercial in the Financial District as examples of what he called exploitation by conservatives who don't "allow the facts to get in their way. "Shame on the extreme right," Newsom told The Chronicle. "I am...

San Francisco -- Saying he wants to start his second term with a clean slate, Mayor Gavin Newsom today asked all city department heads and anybody he has appointed to serve on a city commission or board to hand in their letters of resignation. On Friday, Newsom also told all senior staffers in his office to do the same. Newsom told department heads at his regular Monday department head meeting that he wanted each of them to turn in letters of resignation, but didn't say how many resignations he ultimately would accept, according to Mitch Katz, director of the city's...

San Francisco's restaurateur-turned-mayor Gavin Newsom cast doubt Friday over the viability of a threat made by restaurant owners who said they might shut down for a day to highlight the rising cost of doing business in the city. Newsom, who sold his interest in such popular San Francisco spots as PlumpJack Cafe and Balboa Cafe before his 2004 swearing-in, said he could sympathize with recent concerns raised by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, but said that a one-day closure would only hurt the restaurants and that a majority of them would probably not participate. "It's against their best interest," Newsom...

IT'S TIME for the 39-year-old boy mayor to grow up. Look, I'd rather not be writing about Gavin Newsom's personal life. Newsom has been a good mayor for San Francisco, and that is what counts the most. Like many who have watched him, I've tended to figure that, as Newsom is divorced, good-looking and holds a high-profile political office, he's going to get around. When Matier & Ross reported that Newsom had been dating 20-year-old Brittanie Mountz, I questioned -- not for the first time -- his judgment. I wondered what Newsom would have to talk about with someone so...