A sitting Santa Rosa elected official told a Sonoma County jury that former Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli held up his cellphone at a 2020 winery party, played a sexually explicit video of a council rival, and boasted, "Now she'll never run against me."

The testimony from Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Jeff Okrepkie — the highest-profile witness to take the stand in the five-week civil trial — reframes the case against Foppoli as something beyond the sexual-assault allegations of seven women. It casts the alleged footage as a political weapon: a tool one candidate used to try to knock a rival out of a Windsor mayoral race. Foppoli, unexpectedly called to the stand the same afternoon, denied ever showing the video and said he did not recall telling a reporter that damaging tapes existed.

The evening began as a campaign party. In August 2020, midway through his run to become Windsor's first elected mayor, Dominic Foppoli hosted friends and political figures at his Christopher Creek Winery in Healdsburg. Among the guests was Jeff Okrepkie — then the winery's insurance agent, now vice mayor of Santa Rosa — and one of Foppoli's rivals on the Windsor Town Council.

As Okrepkie was leaving, Foppoli called out to him, he testified Thursday (external source, opens in a new tab) in Sonoma County Superior Court. "He said, 'Jeff, you got to see this,'" Okrepkie recalled, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's account (external source, opens in a new tab) of the proceedings. Foppoli held up a phone showing black-and-white footage that appeared to come from a barrel-room surveillance camera. "It was a video of Jane Doe 7, which appeared to be her performing oral sex on a man," Okrepkie said — referring to the council colleague and mayoral rival identified in the case only as Jane Doe 7. "As soon as it clicked what I was seeing, I recoiled."

Then, Okrepkie testified, Foppoli yelled the line that gives the day its charge: "Now she'll never run against me." The Press Democrat, whose reporter Colin Atagi also sat in the courtroom, recorded the same words ("or something to that effect," the witness added). Foppoli was "excitable and laughing about it," Okrepkie said. "Like he thought it was funny."

He said, 'Jeff, you got to see this,'" Okrepkie recalled, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's account of the proceedings.

At the time, the witness said, he brushed it off as an "arrogant and flippant remark" and did not grasp its weight. His view shifted only after April 2021, when the Chronicle published the investigation that first aired the women's allegations. Okrepkie testified that he then reported what he had seen to law enforcement and severed his business ties to the winery.

Jane Doe 7 has alleged that Foppoli later leveraged the tape to silence her — threatening to release footage she says captured a nonconsensual encounter after she was drugged at that same August 2020 event. She testified the same day, describing the imbalance between them. "I didn't have power over him," she said. Asked by her attorney, Traci Carrillo, whether Foppoli had power over her, she answered: "Yes."

The seven plaintiffs accuse Foppoli of assaults spanning 2001 to 2019, several while they were intoxicated and, they suspect, drugged. Prosecutors never brought criminal charges; the women sued in April 2022 (external source, opens in a new tab), and the case is now with a jury in Judge Dana Simonds' courtroom. Foppoli stepped down from the Windsor council in the spring of 2021 and has insisted on his innocence ever since.

He said so again from the witness stand. Called unexpectedly by the plaintiffs' attorneys on Thursday afternoon, Foppoli denied showing Okrepkie any photo or video of Jane Doe 7. Asked whether he had told a reporter covering the allegations that videos of her existed that would be "harmful," he answered, "I don't recall that." Under cross-examination, Foppoli's lawyer Andrew Watters pressed the witness on whether there was any legitimate business reason he might have been shown such footage. "No," Okrepkie said.