Former Newsom aide Nathan Ballard pleads not guilty in domestic violence case involving wife, daughter
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Nathan Ballard, then Super Bowl 50 host committee spokesman, stands along the Embarcadero during construction of Super Bowl City in January 2016.Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2016
Nathan Ballard, a longtime aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom and high-profile Democrats, pleaded not guilty to two felony domestic violence charges in Napa County Superior Court on Tuesday morning after his wife alleged he pushed her into a glass door and tried to suffocate their 4-year-old daughter with a pillow.
At Ballard’s initial court hearing, a Napa County prosecutor said Ballard had not been abiding by a stay-away order involving his estranged wife and two young children as recently as last weekend. Ballard’s attorney Tony Brass said he would accept service of a formal protective order and serve it to his client, who appeared for the hearing by Zoom.
For most Americans, 2020 will be remembered for a pivotal presidential race conducted against the worldâs worst pandemic in a century. But this yearâs election season also produced changes on the local front, and the widest local participation on record for local voters.
Scott Sedgley Submitted photo
Voters in the city of Napa chose their first new mayor in 16 years. Two other candidates won seats on the City Council, including just the second Latino ever to move into the role in Napa. And a Napa County judge became the first to face an election challenge since the 1980s â a race she won handily.
There is some resolution, if not closure, to a deadly Napa crash that left a North Carolina teenager dead and a sister and family devastated.
Finnuala Hanifan was sentenced Friday to 210 days in Napa County jail for the 2019 DUI crash that killed her sister, Michaella Hanifan.
However, that jail time is stayed pending Hanifan completing community service with an anti-DUI organization, Napa County Superior Court Judge Scott Young ruled. She will also be on probation for five years.
Finnuala, now 23, pleaded no contest in Napa Superior Court to one count of vehicular manslaughter in connection with the June 23, 2019 death of Michaella.