Governor candidates have their uncomfortable moment in #MeToo spotlight

SAN FRANCISCO -- In politics, a candidate's past never goes away -- especially when it involves his sexual history.

That's one reason three of the men in the nearly all-male field of candidates running for governor -- front-running Democrats Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as GOP Assemblyman Travis Allen -- are spending a lot of time responding to concerns about their inappropriate sexual behavior, which in some cases happened a decade ago.

Their challenge in the #MeToo era of heightened awareness about sexual harassment is that they can't dodge the question. They have to explain how they have changed.

That said, women's rights advocates aren't asking any of the candidates to leave the race. Instead, they're urging voters to watch the reaction of the candidates who have engaged in inappropriate behavior.

How they react -- be it with contrition and self-awareness or defensiveness and denial -- should inform voters about how to view their transgressions. Advocates also suggest looking at the reaction of the women in their lives as a sign of their evolution.

``Did they show some leadership in how they grew from their mistakes?'' said Christine Pelosi, who chairs the California Democratic Party Women's Caucus and a board member of We Said Enough, a newly formed nonprofit that launched a campaign to bring attention to harassment and abuse in the state Capitol.

``I'd much rather have a leader who owned up to their mistakes and learned from them.''

Pelosi, who has not endorsed a candidate in the governor's race, said: ``We're trying to establish a path to justice. If you make it 'one strike and you're out,' you'd clear out the Legislature.''

Each of the incidents was different.

Eleven years ago, when he was mayor of San Francisco, Newsom confessed to an affair with an employee at City Hall. That same year, while he was mayor of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa had an affair with a TV reporter that broke up his 20-year marriage. And six years ago, according to a newly released Legislature report, Allen was accused of sexually inappropriate behavior by two women in the Capitol.

Their reactions differ, too.

Last week, during an appearance at the University of San Francisco, Newsom was asked what he would say to voters leery of supporting him because of his affair with Ruby Rippey Gibney, who was his commission appointments secretary. At the time, she was married to Alex Tourk, Newsom's campaign manager, and known as Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Newsom was separated from his first wife at the time.

``I would say the same thing that I said (then) to the voters in San Francisco. That I acknowledged it. I apologized for it. I learned an enormous amount from it,'' Newsom said Monday during an onstage interview. ``And I am every day trying to be a champion and a model -- not just for women and girls -- but to deal with the issue that we need to focus on, which is the crisis with men and boys in this state and in this country.''

When the incident surfaces during the campaign, Newsom often points to the work that his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has done to highlight gender issues in her films, ``Miss Representation'' and ``The Mask You Live In.''

But in a sign of how the culture -- and people -- evolve, Siebel Newsom initially wasn't that forgiving of Rippey Gidley, referring to her ``checkered history.''

``I shouldn't say this, but there are two sides to every story,'' Siebel Newsom told The Chronicle in March 2007, just a month after the story broke and when she was dating Newsom. ''If people did research into the scandal ... the woman is the culprit.`` The next day she issued a written apology.

But while Newsom's affair may seem to fit into the #MeToo paradigm because it involves a boss-employee power dynamic, Rippey Gibney said, ''In this particular instance, however, I am doubtful that it applies.

Rippey Gibney, who has remarried and said she has been sober for 11 years, wrote on her Facebook page last week: ``Yes, I was a subordinate but I was also a free-thinking, 33-year-old, adult married woman & mother. (I also happened to have an unfortunate inclination towards drinking-to-excess and self-destruction.)''

Still, Newsom's GOP gubernatorial rival, Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox, ripped him for ``just passing it off as an indiscretion of his and a moral lapse.''

``It was an endangerment to his position as a leader of this city,'' Cox said.

Yet it is not enough to disqualify Newsom from running for governor, said Adama Iwu, a Sacramento lobbyist who started the We Said Enough campaign that led hundreds of women to call for an to end the state Capitol's ``pervasive'' sexual harassment culture. Nor should it disqualify the others.

``To the extent that people show remorse and move on -- that's all we can ask,'' Iwu said. ``That's what voters need to hear.''

Allen has been more defensive when confronted with allegations of inappropriate behavior. He was the only Republican legislator named in documents released by the Legislature this month outlining 20 substantiated complaints of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior against other lawmakers or high-level legislative staffers over the past 12 years.

The allegations involve complaints in 2013 ``by two women that they perceived him as being too familiar, and it was making them feel uncomfortable,'' according to the report. One woman told investigators that while sitting next to Allen during a briefing, he moved ``his foot over so that it was touching hers.''

Allen contends he was just being friendly.

``If at any time my friendliness was misconstrued, then it was simply that,'' Allen said. Nevertheless, if anyone ``ever felt that if I or anyone else had acted inappropriately, that is their right to lodge these complaints.''

The #MeToo movement, he said, ``is about women who have been violated. This is exactly what has not happened in my case.''

The only woman in the governor's race, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, tweeted: ``Travis Allen is now a known predator and should drop out.'' She has not criticized Villaraigosa or Newsom for their affairs.

Pelosi said ``the difference between Gavin Newsom and Travis Allen is that one of them said, 'I made a mistake. I understand toxic masculinity.' Travis Allen is still denying that it happened,'' Pelosi said. ``When you do that, you're minimizing the experience of the women who came forward. He was admonished and he knows he was admonished.''

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, the author of a new whistle-blower law to protect people who work in the Capitol, withdrew her endorsement of Allen after the report came out. But she was hesitant to say whether the past conduct of the gubernatorial candidates should disqualify them.

``For some people it is,'' Melendez said. ``For others -- just look at other people who were steadfast in their support for President Clinton,'' after he admitted to an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. ``Voters have to decide what's important to them in a candidate.''

In Newsom's case, voters haven't seemed to mind. He was re-elected mayor in 2007 with 72 percent of the vote and handily won two terms as lieutenant governor.

Voters have been equally forgiving toward Villaraigosa, who was elected mayor in 2004, often portraying himself as a family man with two children and a happy marriage.

In June 2007, he announced that he and his wife of 20 years, Corina, were separating. Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas announced the news to viewers that night. What she didn't announce was that she had been having an affair with the mayor.

Nevertheless, Villaraigosa was re-elected in 2009. He and his wife subsequently divorced, and eventually, his relationship with Salinas ended as well. In 2016, he married Patricia Govea.

Given that this was a consensual relationship that didn't involve a subordinate, advocates say Villaraigosa's affair is mostly a concern to his family.

That wasn't his first public indiscretion -- nor his first public apology. In 1994, during his first run for the state Assembly, he had an affair with the wife of a friend. At the time, he was married and had two small children, whom he often touted in campaign literature in an attempt to portray himself as a family man. He apologized, he and his wife eventually reconciled, and voters re-elected him twice to the Assembly. He became Assembly speaker in 1998.

``I don't think anybody should be judged by the worst thing they have done,'' said Andrea Dew Steele, a San Franciscan who is president and founder of Emerge America, which recruits and mentors female candidates across the country.

Instead, she said, ``Look at their record. What did they do for women? What is their policies on families?''