The Gavin Newsom affair that disrupted San Francisco City Hall in 2007 is getting a fuller account from Ruby Rippey, the former mayoral aide involved. In a first-person Vanity Fair essay, Rippey describes repeated meetings, her substance addiction at the time and a workplace imbalance she now believes placed greater responsibility on Newsom.
The affair itself is not a new revelation. Newsom publicly admitted it nearly two decades ago. What is new is Rippey’s detailed explanation of how the relationship operated and why she remained largely silent after it became public.
How Rippey says the meetings were arranged
The relationship began in 2005, when Rippey was Newsom’s 33-year-old appointments secretary and he was mayor of San Francisco. She was married to Alex Tourk, Newsom’s close friend, former deputy chief of staff and campaign manager.
Rippey says she used her access to Newsom’s schedule to identify openings, then appeared at places where she knew he would be. After making sure he noticed her, she would leave and wait for a text asking, “Where are you?”
She recalls meeting Newsom at several locations, including:
- His Russian Hill penthouse
- A private room inside a North Beach bar
- The W Hotel in Los Angeles
Rippey does not describe the relationship as romantic. Instead, she says it became another form of intoxication while she was struggling with alcohol and cocaine, reinforced by proximity to political power and the feeling of being selected by the person running City Hall.
She entered rehabilitation on May 19, 2006, and says that ended the affair.
When the private relationship became public
Rippey did not tell Tourk until January 2007. He confronted Newsom and resigned from the administration. Newsom then publicly acknowledged the affair and apologized.
Contemporary reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle said rumors had circulated inside City Hall in late 2005 and that some colleagues knew at least part of the story before Tourk did. That history makes the scandal less a perfectly contained secret than an institutional failure that remained unofficial until it could no longer be managed quietly.
There is also a notable difference between the accounts of how long the affair lasted. The Chronicle reported in 2007 that Newsom privately characterized it as only “a couple of encounters.” Rippey now describes a pattern of repeated meetings. Newsom similarly called it his “briefest” affair in his 2026 memoir, where he described it as “the worst betrayal of my life.”
The available reporting does not independently settle the duration. It does show that Rippey’s current account is more extensive than Newsom’s earlier description.
What Kamala Harris allegedly told Rippey
After the story became public, Rippey says Kamala Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, called her. Rippey was unemployed, short of money and considering an offer to write a memoir.
“I wouldn’t say anything right now, Ruby,” Harris allegedly told her. “Just pause. More time will give you better perspective.”
Rippey says she followed that advice and largely avoided discussing the affair publicly for years. No independent corroboration of the conversation has emerged, so the account rests on Rippey’s recollection.
A representative for Newsom told TMZ that the governor had already acknowledged his role and apologized while serving as mayor. The representative added that Newsom later met his wife, started a family and focused on public service.
Newsom has “nothing further to add,” the representative said, citing his previous public statements and memoir. That is a tidy communications position, although Rippey’s essay adds details that were not part of the original apology.
Why the workplace power issue still matters
San Francisco’s administrative code did not automatically classify a consensual relationship between a supervisor and subordinate as harassment. It did, however, recognize that such relationships could create conflicts of interest.
Rippey does not allege that Newsom coerced her. Her argument is more specific: consent does not erase unequal authority, particularly when one person controls the workplace and the other works directly for him.
The relationship also became connected to a separate question involving city benefits. After Rippey entered substance-abuse treatment, she received $10,154 in retroactive “catastrophic illness” pay.
A later city investigation found no evidence that Newsom improperly influenced the payment. However, investigators questioned whether Rippey qualified and found no comparable case in which substance abuse alone had made a city employee eligible. The inquiry therefore cleared Newsom of intervening while leaving the administrative decision itself under scrutiny. Bureaucracy occasionally manages to produce both an answer and another problem.
How Rippey’s view has changed
In 2018, Rippey told the Los Angeles Times that she did not believe the #MeToo framework necessarily applied because she had been a “free-thinking” adult. Her new essay does not abandon personal responsibility, but it adds a sharper assessment of institutional power.
She says she made her own choices and accepts responsibility for them. At the same time, she now believes Newsom carried greater responsibility because he held the more powerful position in their professional relationship.
That distinction is likely to matter if Newsom seeks national office. Political opponents would not need to rediscover the affair. They could instead focus on the conflicting descriptions of its duration, the supervisor-subordinate structure and the questions surrounding Rippey’s city benefits.
Rippey says she has now been sober for 20 years and has remarried. She also attended Tourk’s wedding after he told her, “Ruby. We are family.” Her essay does not revise the basic chronology of the scandal. It revises who gets to explain what the chronology meant.
