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.”