Ruby Rippey has published a first-person essay in Vanity Fair revisiting her affair with Gavin Newsom, offering the most detailed public account to date from her perspective of a scandal that first surfaced nearly two decades ago. The essay, titled "How I Blew Up – Then Rebuilt – My Life," appeared on July 28, 2026 Vanity Fair. The Guardian covered the piece the same day The Guardian.

Rippey worked as Newsom's appointments secretary when he was mayor of San Francisco. She was married to Alex Tourk, Newsom's deputy chief of staff, who later managed Newsom's re-election campaign. The affair took place more than two decades before the essay's publication. Rippey does not name Newsom directly in the piece, referring to him only as her "boss" and the "mayor" The Guardian.

The essay's dek frames its stakes plainly: in the wreckage of the scandal, Rippey "faced her demons but lost her voice," and "Twenty years later, she is ready to share her story" Vanity Fair.

Rippey describes the affair's origin at a gathering with a hot tub. Her husband left early, irritated that she wanted to keep partying while he drove home to their one-year-old son. What followed was a trip to The Carneros Inn in Napa, in Newsom's chauffeured town car, accompanied by Newsom's sister and others. During the ride, Newsom massaged Rippey's foot. She woke the next morning beside Newsom at the inn, having passed out; her dress was soaked from the waist down because she had wet the bed Vanity Fair.

Days later, Newsom slipped Rippey's gold bracelet, a gift from her grandmother that she had left behind in the Napa hotel room, onto her desk at work. Subsequent meetings took place at his Russian Hill penthouse, a private back room in a North Beach bar, and the W Hotel in Los Angeles Vanity Fair.

Rippey characterizes the relationship not as love or romance but as "intoxication," driven by proximity to power and the feeling of being "chosen" and "newly visible." She writes that she would scan Newsom's calendar for openings where she might "happen" to see him later that night. At the time, she was struggling with "white-knuckling long stretches of sobriety" and feeling muted by pregnancy and new motherhood. She describes walking the corridors of San Francisco City Hall in "nude stilettos striking the marble floor" and feeling Newsom's deliberate, curious gaze Vanity Fair.

Newsom publicly admitted to the relationship in 2007 at a city hall press conference, saying, "Everything you've heard and read is true" The Guardian. Reuters reported at the time that the affair occurred about 18 months before the apology, while Newsom was divorcing Kimberly Guilfoyle, who later became a Fox News host Reuters.

In his new memoir, Newsom describes the relationship as "the briefest of affairs" and writes that he "came clean" to Alex Tourk. Rippey disputes this account, saying she had already told her husband the truth The Guardian.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who married Newsom in 2008, called Rippey the "culprit" in 2007 and later apologized for those remarks. Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, contacted Rippey after the scandal broke and advised her to take time before speaking publicly. Rippey eventually went to rehab and left her job with the mayor's office. She and Alex Tourk divorced The Guardian.

In 2018, Rippey described herself as "a free-thinking, 33-year-old, adult married woman and mother" with an "inclination toward drinking-to-excess" The Guardian.

The New York Post first reported on July 15, 2026, that Rippey-Gibney was writing a forthcoming essay for Vanity Fair, roughly two weeks ahead of publication New York Post. Yahoo News characterized the forthcoming essay as forcing Newsom to face a "reckoning" over the 2007 affair Yahoo News. TMZ covered the essay on July 28 TMZ, and the Sacramento Bee reported that the essay revealed new, contradicting details Sacramento Bee. The New York Post also reported on July 28 that Newsom had responded to Rippey's claims New York Post.

The timing is consequential. As of July 2026, Newsom is in the final year of his second term as governor of California and is widely expected to run for the White House in 2028 The Guardian.

The essay's central tension is captured in Rippey's own words: "For my former boss, it is a footnote in a longer arc of ascent. For me, it is the fracture that split my life into before and after" The Guardian. That framing, published as Newsom's memoir circulates and his national ambitions crystallize, ensures the episode will be read not only as personal history but as a test of how a candidate's past holds up under renewed scrutiny. The conflicting accounts of who told Tourk the truth first, the involvement of Harris as an adviser during the fallout, and the detailed reconstruction of the affair's circumstances all give political opponents and journalists fresh material to probe. Whether the essay shifts perceptions of Newsom or settles into the footnote Rippey describes for him will depend on how the 2028 landscape takes shape.