Services will be held in San Francisco on Wednesday for Clare native Anthony Christopher Guilfoyle, an indelible fixture on San Francisco's political scene, most visibly on Gavin Newsom's political campaigns.Mr. Guilfoyle died today at San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center of cancer. He was 72. Mr. Guilfoyle was the father of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the mayor's former wife and a former deputy district attorney in San Francisco. He was born in Ennis. He came to the United States when he was 21, settling in San Francisco, where he worked in the construction trade with his uncle, Michael Lynch.
Mr. Guilfoyle served in the U.S. Army in what was then called West Germany, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He knew, when he came to the U.S., that he would probably be drafted, but it didn't bother him at all. "It was a gift to come to the United States," he told The Chronicle in an interview seven years ago. "Joining the Army was one small way I could give something back to this country."
In San Francisco, Mr. Guilfoyle had a wide range of friends, in and out of the city's political establishment, and he became an entrenched member of Gavin Newsom's inner circle, both in Newsom's successful campaigns for his post on the Board of Supervisors and later during Newsom's 2003 campaign for mayor. Mr. Guilfoyle, known in political inner circles as "The Godfather," had many roles, from keeping the campaign workers fed as they worked into the wee hours, to counseling Newsom on the occasionally arcane ins and outs of San Francisco politics.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
