SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Confronting a political scandal that sounds more like a soap opera, the city's handsome young mayor made an emotional apology Thursday for an affair with the wife of his own campaign manager.
"I want to make it clear that everything you've heard and read is true and that I'm deeply sorry about that," Mayor Gavin Newsom said during a hastily called City Hall news conference at which he went on to apologize to the aide, his staff, his family and San Franciscans.
Political observers said the divorced mayor's effusive apology, which came only hours after the story broke on a newspaper's Web site, may have helped defuse a scandal that threatened to haunt his bid for re-election in November.
Newsom's former deputy chief of staff, Alex Tourk, 39, resigned as manager of the mayor's re-election campaign Wednesday after approaching Newsom about his relationship with his blond attractive wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, 34, who worked as the mayor's appointments secretary until last spring.