Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli resigned from office on Friday, one and a half months after the San Francisco Chronicle first published four women’s sexual assault allegations against Foppoli.
Since the Chronicle published its first Foppoli article on April 8, more women have come forward with a range of allegations against Foppoli. The most recent allegations come from former Sonoma Mayor Rachel Hundley.
Foppoli has denied all of the allegations and remained somewhat involved in Windsor Town Council meetings, even presiding over an April 14 meeting in which dozens of Sonoma County residents called for his resignation from public office.
“It is with a heavy heart that I am resigning, effective today. I have always and will always maintain that I did not engage in any non-consensual sexual acts with any woman. I recently learned that a woman in Palm Beach, Florida is accusing me of non-consensual acts while I was visiting there in March of this year. She made her allegations after she learned of the April 8, 2021 San Francisco Chronicle story. I have no doubt she is making these allegations in an attempt to leverage the situation to her advantage,” Foppoli said in a statement released on Friday morning.
The Chronicle reported on Friday afternoon that Foppoli’s statement came “less than three hours” after Chronicle reporters reached out to the Windsor Mayor for comment on recent allegations by Farrah Abraham, a 29-year-old Los Angeles woman, who contacted the Palm Beach Police Department on April 2, almost a week before the Chronicle published its first article about Foppoli. Abraham is the ninth woman to make a sexual assault or sexual misconduct allegation against Foppoli since April 8.
The California Attorney General’s Office and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office are conducting criminal investigations into the allegations raised against Foppoli over the past month.
Foppoli’s full statement is available here.
