Phil Matier: San Francisco civic soap opera on national stage.
A San Francisco civic soap opera roared back into the national spotlight on Monday, with the primetime return of the city’s former First Lady Kimberly Guilfoyle delivering a fullthroated slam to California and her hometown during her fiery address at the virtual Republican National Convention.
“By the end she was screaming. It was like she was channeling a Disney villain,” said Nate Ballard, who served as press secretary to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Guilfoyle’s former husband, when he was mayor.
Flanked by American flags, Guilfoyle slammed the state Newson governs as a “a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.”
The harsh words came as Newsom continues to struggle with the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, the resulting tanking economy and epic unemployment, and the worst wildfires the Bay Area has ever seen.
“It was hard to tell if it was personal or part of President Trump’s reelection strategy,” Ballard said.
Guilfoyle also took aim at her onetime professional rival, Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, telling the TV audience, “If you want to see the socialist (Joe) BidenHarris future for our
country, just take a look at California.”
Guilfoyle’s California carpet bombing is the latest chapter in the ongoing public and private relationships among Guilfoyle, Newsom and, to a lesser extent, Harris.
Those relationships date to the early 2000s, when they all were seen as young upandcomers in the political and social circles that revolved around City Hall and the Getty mansion on the socalled Gold Coast atop Pacific Heights.
At the time Guilfoyle was an assistant district attorney and part of the prosecution team in the infamous Pacific Heights dogmauling trial.
The case involved two giant Presa Canarios whose owner was a highranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood at Pelican Bay State Prison and is serving three life sentences. The dogs were being cared for by Paul “Cornfed” Schneider’s attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, who were also Schneider’s adoptive parents.
The dogs had mauled their apartment house neighbor Diane Whipple to death as she was returning from grocery shopping. Noel served two years for involuntary manslaughter and died in 2018. Knoller remains in prison on a seconddegree murder conviction.
The trial was an international sensation, and Guilfoyle caught the eye of cable executives in New York who began using her as an onair legal analyst.
At the same time Guilfoyle, a bornandraised San Franciscan, was also making news with her new husband, thenSupervisor Newsom, who with the backing of thenMayor Willie Brown was eyeing a run for mayor.
And Harris, Brown’s former girlfriend, was using her considerable glamour, brains and connections to make her mark on the city and a run for district attorney. While it was all smiles in public, the competition between Guilfoyle and Harris, who had worked together as prosecutors in the DA’s office, was intense.
Guilfoyle claimed that Harris had tried to block her from being rehired at the DA’s office after moving to Los Angeles for a spell. Guilfoyle did get her job back and went on to dogmaul fame. Harris moved over to the City Attorney’s Office.
“The bottom line is she didn’t want me there,” Guilfoyle said at the time.
In separate, hardfought campaigns in 2003, Newsom was elected mayor and Harris was elected district attorney.
“Kimberly was very involved in Newsom’s first mayoral campaign, but after that she was spending more and more time in New York pursuing her TV career,” said P.J. Johnston, who served as Brown’s press secretary.
After a few years of living increasingly separate, bicoastal lives, Newsom and Guilfoyle divorced in 2006.
But according to friends, the two have have remained in touch, something they occasionally joke about.
According to the Washington Post, when Newsom was running for governor in 2018, Guilfoyle called and had him give her thennew boyfriend, Donald Trump Jr., tips on how to manage his hair.
More recently Guilfoyle and Trump Jr. have emerged as two of the biggest fundraisers for the president’s reelection campaign.
Guilfoyle’s presence in the Trump camp may also help explain Newsom’s twosided relationship with the president.
That relationship appears to have transcended the public slap Newsom gave the president during last week’s Democratic National Convention for threatening to cut off federal assistance to fight California’s wildfires because “he says we haven’t raked enough leaves.”
“You can’t make that up,” Newsom said in his convention video.
The next day at a news conference, he made nice, telling reporters of his “strong personal relationship” with Trump.
“There’s not one phone call that I have made to the president where he hasn’t quickly responded, and almost in every instance, he has responded favorably in addressing the emergency needs of this state,” Newsom said.
Closer to home, Newsom has also remained close to Harris, despite their apparent sibling rivalry.
As one former consultant who worked with both of them explained, given that Newsom and Harris share the same political and fundraising base, a race between the two would end in mutual career suicide.
So now Harris is running for vice president, Newsom is running California, and Guilfoyle is taking notsoveiled shots at both of them.
With the next chapter yet to be written.
“Say what you will, but it all makes for one hell of a story,” said longtime Newsom and Harris friend Stanlee Gatti, event producer to the social and tech set.
“We are not going to see stars like this coming out of San Francisco again for a long time,” Gatti said.
Cue the fireworks.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGOTV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 4157778815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier