 SAN FRANCISCO For the first time since admitting to porking a sexual affair with a top aide's wife and beginning treatment for alcohol abuse, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday discussed his personal problems in a wide-ranging, candid interview with CBS Station KPIX-TV in San Francisco that he described as "liberating."
"Thash righ', dammit! Liberatin'!"
"I'm trying to reconcile things, make amends," said the mayor, "but it's something that's been challenging."
"I mean, I wuzh sooooo busted! Thish is Shan Franshishco, but even here there'zh limitsh. Kinda. Sorta. Not many, o' course..."
Earlier this month Newsom, 39, admitted to a sexual liaison in 2005 with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the wife of his now-former campaign manager Alex Tourk. Newsom on Wednesday denied any knowledge or involvement in a $10,000 sick time payback to Rippey-Tourk when she left her city post as his appointments secretary.
"I dunno. Wudn't me."
A few days after the sex scandal broke, the mayor announced he was entering counseling for alcohol use.
"Thash righ'! 'Mgonna dry out."
"I am who I am, a lush imperfect and a work in progress," said Newsom when asked about his counseling sessions with Mimi Silbert, the founder and director of the famed Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco.
"I'm tryin' to nail Mimi, too, but she won' hol' still, damn her!"
"I don't need to drink wine, and I don't think it's helpful right now," Newsom said. "I need a slug of gin little bit more time to self-reflect on why it is that I made the choice I made a year and a half ago."
"How'na hell did I get so busted?"
When asked if he was an alcoholic, Newsom replied, "I don't know if that's the case," although he acknowledged that drinking had "gotten in the way of my job performance."
"Y'shee, shome people, they go to meetin's. Thash yer bashick alcoholic. Me, I don' go to meetin's. I'm a drunk."
He said that as mayor, "I've got to be ready. I've got to be focused. I gotta be clear."
"Shometimes Everclear."
Newsom denied rumors that he has used cocaine or other illicit drugs, calling them "laughable" and "gratuitously erroneous."
"An' that thing widda German shepherd? That never happened. There ain' no proof it did."
Delancey Street, founded in 1971, provides a residential program for hard-core addicts, including ex-convicts and prostitutes, although Newsom is receiving nightly outpatient treatment sessions that he said does not interfere with his city duties. In fact, the mayor described his job these days as a "therapeutic" help in his recovery efforts. Delancey Street does not rely on the 12-step philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous, but rather it works to address the underlying reasons for excessive drinking.
"Y'mean availability?"
"The wine consumption is pushed aside," explained the now-sober mayor, who said the treatment is helping him examine why he ever felt the need to guzzle direct from the bottle "drink to an extreme." Newsom said the recent "attention to my drinking ... has given me focus," but added he was trying to avoid the on-going media "obsession" with his personal problems.
"Yeah. It don't bozher me, why'zh it bozher them? Riddle me dat!"
"The hardest part is not reading the papers, watching the news on TV," he explained, comparing the scope of media coverage of his personal foibles to that when the Iraq war began. Before taking office in 2004, Newsom founded a wine store, a string of highly successful restaurants and the PlumpJack Winery in the Napa Valley. He is running for a second term in November and dismissed speculation about what his political future might hold down the road. "I just want to do a better job in San Francisco (as mayor)," he said. "I care about going before the voters and making my case for re-election." 
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