RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 7 sourcesNewsom’s 2005 affair with Ruby Rippey, when he was mayor of San Francisco, rocked California political circles at the time — and are reemerging as a character issue as the now-governor eyes a presidential bid
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The aide who had an affair with her boss, then- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — while she was married to his campaign manager — is speaking out about the ordeal for the first time in 20 years.
In an essay for Vanity Fair published Tuesday , Ruby Rippey, 54, told how the affair with the now-California governor, in 2005-2006, tore her life apart. The mother also reflected on how it took “something catastrophic” to tackle her drinking problem that had spiraled.
“I had been trying to hold together a job, a marriage, a baby, and an affair while drinking and using cocaine,” she wrote, and described the affair not as love or romance, but “an intoxication.”
While Newsom was single at the time of the affair — after divorcing Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is now President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Greece and the former girlfriend of his eldest son, Don Jr. — the scandal of a relationship with his aide, who was also the wife of his campaign manager, Alex Tourk, rocked political circles in California at the time.
Rippey, now 20 years sober, takes responsibility for her role in the affair but concludes in the essay, “Power does not distribute consequences evenly.”
Their fling, which began in the summer of 2005, not long after she gave birth to a son with Tourk, lasted months. The mom, who has since remarried, recalled how she would go to Newsom’s penthouse in the upscale Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, or a room at the W Hotel when in Los Angeles.
The trysts would often take place in a haze of alcohol, she said. “We meet and we drink. There is sex, but it isn’t the point. The point is proximity.”
Rippey eventually confessed to her now ex-husband in January 2007 via email, unable to face him in person, she said.
“I keep it plain: just sex—on and off for months—with the mayor. It ended before rehab. I’m sorry. I blame my alcoholism. I stare at the screen for a moment, then press send and turn off my phone,” Rippey wrote. “I still wonder which was the greater offense: my infidelity or my failure to look him in the eye when I told him about it.”
She said she came clean to Tourk, who then requested a meeting with the mayor to confront him before resigning from Newsom’s team.
“During that time, he requests a meeting with the mayor, who is still in Davos at the World Economic Forum,” Rippey wrote. “He wants to hear it directly — to look him in the eye one last time. There is no straight answer.”
When the affair became public in February 2007, Newsom was dating his now wife, Jennifer Siebel.
Newsom addressed the controversy in his recent memoir, where he acknowledged the pair were “drinking too much.”
Rippey “was among a group of staffers who came to my apartment for a party. She was the last to leave. It was the stupidest and also briefest of affairs,” Newsom wrote in his memoir. “A year later, to her credit, Ruby decided to come clean to her 12-step group.”
Rippey disputed Newsom’s account of the affair in her essay, where she said he “writes that he was the one who ‘came clean’ to Alex.”
“It reads—to me, at least—as a version of events that gives him credit for something I had already done,” she wrote. “Technically defensible, perhaps, but one that leaves the unmistakable impression that he, not I, was the one who told Alex the truth.”
She also had a different take on the night that kicked off their affair, pegging it to the wedding of a City Hall staffer at a Napa Valley estate on July 2, 2005.
“My boss and I end up in the narrow hallway outside the bathroom at the same time. We wait, across from each other. The space is tight. The silence stretches. He slips his hands into his tan trouser pockets and smiles — his usual shy, aw-shucks smile. I say nothing. I hold his gaze longer than I should,” she writes in the VF essay.
“By the time night falls, I am sitting on the edge of a hot tub with my feet in the water. ... My husband leaves soon after, irritated that I want to keep partying while he drives home to our one-year-old son. The next clear memory is getting into the back of my boss’ chauffeured town car, heading to The Carneros Inn.”
Her account of the affair and her difficult period after and during it comes as Newsom’s term as California governor nears its end and as he eyes a potential run for president in 2028.
In response to Rippey’s essay, Newsom’s office said the governor has “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,” his office said. “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.”
The mom also addressed how the #MeToo movement painted her as “not the culprit but as a powerless subordinate,” which she refutes. But Rippey explained that on reflection, she failed to acknowledge how “power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist.”
“Both things are true: I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly,” she said.
Rippey writes that she is now on good terms with her ex-husband, co-parenting their son, and even attended his wedding to their mutual close friend.
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