Former Newsom Aide Challenges His Version Of Their Affair

A former aide to Gavin Newsom is challenging the governor’s characterization of their 20-year-old affair, complicating his narrative about a relationship that once imperiled his political career.

Ruby Rippey’s account in Vanity Fair of her much-dissected affair with Newsom when he was the unmarried mayor of San Francisco is reopening scrutiny of the relationship ahead of Newsom’s likely run for president.

While Rippey — at the time a staffer married to top aide Alex Tourk — takes responsibility for the affair, recounting at length her struggles with substance abuse and likening her relationship with Newsom to a form of addiction, she takes issue with Newsom’s recent memoir downplaying the “briefest of affairs” and suggesting that he first “came clean” to Tourk, when she asserts she broke the news to her then-husband.

“It reads — to me, at least — as a version of events that gives him credit for something I had already done,” Rippey wrote in Vanity Fair. “Technically defensible, perhaps, but one that leaves the unmistakable impression that he, not I, was the one who told Alex the truth.”

Rippey recounts two episodes in which she drank so much that she later struggled to recall what had happened after waking up in bed with Newsom, one time fully clothed. The piece does not accuse Newsom of nonconsensual sex. But Rippey writes that her view of the underlying power dynamics shifted after the #MeToo movement forced a broader re-evaluation of relationships between superiors and subordinates.

“The reckoning exposed what I had missed: Power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist,” Rippey wrote. “The responsibility to hold the line belongs to the one who holds it. That didn’t happen. But I didn’t stumble into the space left open — I saw a possibility and went for it. Both things are true: I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly.”

A Newsom spokesperson said Tuesday that the governor had publicly addressed the affair, including in his memoir, and “out of respect for everyone involved, does not have anything further to add.”

The piece also features an appearance by former Vice President Kamala Harris, who rose in parallel to Newsom as San Francisco’s district attorney. Rippey writes that Harris — whom she knew from former Mayor Willie Brown’s administration — counseled her against speaking publicly in the immediate aftermath of the affair, urging her to “pause” for time to gain perspective.

“It turns out to be the best advice I receive,” she wrote.