California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) secretly paid for his own monument inside San Francisco’s City Hall, according to a book released Tuesday.
Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All, written by Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter, alleges that Newsom arranged for a bronze bust of himself to be sculpted inside City Hall to commemorate his term as mayor, using funds he controlled.
Newsom then allegedly feigned ignorance of the identity of the private donors who funded the bust, as well as some uncertainty about its design.
Other mayors have also been honored with busts inside City Hall. The funds for Newsom’s bust were to be donated by private individuals.
“Behested payments” are donations to charitable causes that politicians in California often ask donors to make on their behalf. They are widely considered corrupt, especially when the payments provide some benefit to the politician. (Newsom, for example, has requested payments to a project controlled by his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.)
Co-author Jedd McFatter contends:
An analysis of Newsom’s “behested payments” reveals that between late 2015 and early 2016 three private organizations each donated to a nonprofit called Community Initiatives. As it turns out, two of those payments came from companies owned by Newsom—Balboa Cafe Partners and PlumpJack Management Group. Newsom’s companies specifically earmarked these behested payments for “Mayoral Bust at San Francisco City Hall.”
According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, Balboa Cafe Partners donated $5,000 in 2016 toward the mayoral bust, and PlumpJack donated the same amount. Newsom is involved in both companies.
The H B and Lucille Horn Foundation also donated $10,000 at Newsom’s behest.
The total cost of the bust, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, was $97,000.
The unveiling, the Chronicle noted, was a low-profile event, “w]ith no fanfare, no press and only a few friends in attendance.”
Newsom was running for lieutenant governor at the time of the bust’s unveiling.
SFGate.com had reported that Newsom said he had no idea how the bust would turn out, or who would pay for it:
The honoree proclaims himself a bit reluctant. “I don’t want to call it embarrassing, but it’s a strange thing,” the lieutenant governor said. “I’m just awkward about it. … But now the word is out.”
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The bust is the brainchild of Newsom supporters, and it will be paid for with private funds they will raise, said Newsom. It has “been in the works for a few years, but no one’s worked on it. … It’s been an idea that’s been floating around.” He says he doesn’t even know who those supporters and fundraisers are.
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[Sculptor Bruce] Wolfe sounds sure that clay will become bronze, and that the bust will come to fruition. But “if no one’s interested,” says Newsom, “we can mold it back into a big ball.”
Governor Newsom’s office did not respond to a question for comment about the bust for this article.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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