Mayor Bloomberg's longtime girlfriend Diana Taylor is known as the "de facto" First Lady of the city. She was recently the State Banking Superintendent, with previous stints as a VP at Keyspan and CFO of LIPA, and will be working at Wolfensohn & Company, an investment firm, in a few days. Her fashion sense has been praised in Vogue, yet she stands by her man when he wears shorts and white socks. In other words, she flies under the radar.
Which is not the case with another mayor's girlfriend. In January, San Francisco Gavin Newsom admitted that he had an affair with his campaign manager's wife (and Newsom's appointments manager) Ruby Rippey-Tourk a few years ago. Recently her husband, campaign manager Alex Tourk, found out, and quit in a gigantic scandal (to be fair, Rippey-Tourk told her husband first, because it was part of her rehab.) Newsom's current girlfriend, Jennifer Siebel, was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle for a fluffy Styles piece, but naturally the paper had to ask about the affair. Siebel said, "I shouldn't say this, but there are two sides to every story. If people did research into the scandal ... the woman is the culprit. Alex Tourk is a nice man and it saddens me that his wife did that to him."
SFist covered the story - only for Siebel to comment extensively about the interview, Ruby Tourk, and more. Cut to a few hours later, when Siebel had to publicly apologize, saying, "I am deeply sorry that I have made some public statements in the past few days that have hurt Alex and Ruby Tourk and everyone else involved in this issue. This is a very painful situation for everyone involved and in my case it lead to an expression of frustration that I profoundly regret." And the San Francisco ABC affiliate had another statement from Siebel: "I've never blogged before. This has totally been blown out of proportion. I am a nice girl and I don't deserve this. I apologize to all parties."
We have to admit, we're glad that our Mayor doesn't have these kinds of problems, but watching this unfold, we can't help but think of the Hanover-Giuliani marriage meltdown.
