An aide who had an affair with Gavin Newsom more than 20 years ago when he was the mayor of San Francisco has written a detailed account of the relationship, which Vanity Fair published on Tuesday.
The first-person essay by the aide, Ruby Rippey, who was working as Mr. Newsom’s appointments secretary at the time, was published just as he finishes his final year as California governor and lays the groundwork for a possible presidential run in 2028.
Ms. Rippey, 54, has rarely spoken publicly of the affair, but it was the talk of San Francisco in 2007 when Mr. Newsom stood before reporters and a bank of television cameras at City Hall to announce, “Everything you’ve heard and read is true.”
He explained that he’d had an affair with Ms. Rippey, the wife of Alex Tourk, a close friend who was then serving as his re-election campaign manager after previously working as his deputy chief of staff. Mr. Tourk had just told Mr. Newsom he was resigning after learning about the affair from his wife.
In her essay, Ms. Rippey does not use Mr. Newsom’s name, but she describes him as the mayor of San Francisco and a man “often described as Kennedy-esque.” (Vanity Fair mentions his name once, in its summary of the essay below the headline.)
She seems to blame herself for betraying her husband and says that her life spiraled as she drank heavily and used cocaine.
She indicates that she was not coerced but also held Mr. Newsom responsible for holding power and proceeding with the affair anyway. “Power does not need to coerce,” she writes. “It only needs to exist. The responsibility to hold the line belongs to the one who holds it. That didn’t happen.”
She writes that their relationship began in the summer of 2005 and lasted for months, with off-and-on encounters.
“I always go to him — his penthouse in Russian Hill, a private back room at a North Beach bar, the W Hotel in Los Angeles,” Ms. Rippey writes in her essay.
“We meet and we drink. There is sex, but it isn’t the point,” she continues. “The point is proximity — to power, to being chosen.”
Mr. Newsom announced in January 2005 that he was divorcing Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former San Francisco prosecutor who is now President Trump’s ambassador to Greece. But even though he was single, the revelation of his affair with Ms. Rippey shocked San Francisco residents and California political circles because he had a relationship with his subordinate and upended his close friend’s marriage.
By the time the affair became public knowledge in early 2007, Mr. Newsom was dating Jennifer Siebel, now his wife, who caused her own brouhaha by publicly dismissing the affair as “a couple nothing incidents” and by calling Ms. Rippey “the culprit.” Ms. Siebel later apologized for the remarks.
Izzy Gardon, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said on Tuesday morning: “The governor acknowledged his role and publicly apologized for his conduct nearly two decades ago when he was still mayor. In the time since, he met his wife, started a family and has focused on serving Californians.”
“He addressed this chapter of his life, including in his memoir, and out of respect for everyone involved, does not have anything further to add,” Mr. Gardon continued.
Ms. Rippey was not immediately available on Tuesday morning for comment. She is being represented by Dini Von Mueffling, a public relations strategist who has also worked with Monica Lewinsky and Kristin Cabot, the woman seen on a “kiss cam” being held by her married boss at a Coldplay concert.
Mr. Tourk did not immediately return a text and email seeking comment. After resigning as Newsom’s campaign manager, he founded Ground Floor Public Affairs and has represented companies that include Anthropic, Lyft and the San Francisco Giants.
Ms. Rippey says in Vanity Fair that she considered writing a memoir after the affair became public, but that Kamala Harris, then the city’s district attorney, advised her to say nothing and take time to gain perspective. “It turns out to be the best advice I receive,” Ms. Rippey writes.
The affair was raised by Mr. Newsom’s opponents during his 2018 run for governor, and at the time Ms. Rippey wrote on Facebook that she did not see it as part of the growing #MeToo movement, because while she was his “subordinate,” she was also a 33-year-old married woman and mother who was “free-thinking.”
In the Vanity Fair essay, she writes that she received a phone call in January from an adviser to Mr. Newsom who let her know that she was mentioned in his new memoir. Mr. Newsom primarily discusses her in two paragraphs, calling their relationship “the stupidest and also briefest of affairs.”
She takes issue with Mr. Newsom’s portrayal in the memoir of how he owned up to his role in the affair. He wrote that he had “come clean” to Mr. Tourk, which she felt mistakenly “gives him credit for something I had already done.”
Ms. Rippey, now 20 years sober, lives in Mill Valley, Calif., just north of San Francisco in Marin County. She writes that she and Mr. Tourk divorced and co-parented their son, who is now an adult. She says it took more than a decade for Mr. Tourk to look her in the eye after the affair, but that they have since become close enough again to consider each other family.
Ms. Rippey has remarried and has an 11-year-old son with her second husband.
