Ex-advisor slams Gavin Newsom for considering lieutenant governor bid

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If there is any doubt how quickly allegiances change in politics, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s toe-dipping exercise into the lieutenant governor’s race would seem to erase it.

Newsom hired one of California’s best-known Democratic consultants, Garry South, to run his campaign for governor, and paid the Garry South Group $264,000 within 10 months last year in fees and expenses, state records show.

But after Newsom dropped out, South went to work for Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn, who is running for lieutenant governor. And on Thursday the consultant let loose on his ‘friend and former client’ for expressing a preliminary interest in a post Newsom has disparaged in the past.

‘In every one of several conversations we had about the job while he was running for governor, the mayor expressed nothing but disinterest in and disdain for the office of lieutenant governor,’ South said in a statement. ‘On a couple of occasions, he directed me to repudiate publicly in the strongest terms that he had any interest in ever running for lieutenant governor.’

A Newsom advisor, Peter Ragone, declined to comment. Newsom last week filed a statement indicating his possible interest in being lieutenant governor, but told reporters he had not definitively decided to run.

South said Newsom’s rationale for dropping out of the governor’s race ‘against my advice’ would seem to preclude the new race: ‘He’s still a husband, a new father and the mayor of San Francisco.’ And he said his former client has a ‘responsibility’ to explain why he would run for an office he called ‘a largely ceremonial post’ ‘with no real authority and no real portfolio.’

-- Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento