Ruby Rippey-Gibney, the former San Francisco City Hall aide who had a sexual relationship with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom two decades ago, is preparing to tell her side of the story in an upcoming Vanity Fair article, a move that threatens to reopen one of the most damaging chapters of Newsom's political career just as he eyes the presidency.
The California Post reported Wednesday that Rippey-Gibney plans to break her long public silence about the 2005 affair, which involved Newsom sleeping with his own appointments secretary while she was married to his close friend, top aide, and campaign manager, Alex Tourk.
The timing could hardly be worse for the California governor. Newsom is widely expected to launch a presidential bid. His memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, already revisited the affair on his terms. Now the other party intends to offer her version, in a national glossy, not a Sacramento press conference he controls.
The basic facts have been public since February 2007, when Newsom stood before reporters and conceded the obvious.
"Everything you've heard and read is true. And I am deeply sorry about that."
That press conference came near the end of a turbulent first term as San Francisco's mayor. Reports of hard partying and philandering had already dogged Newsom, including his relationship with Brittanie Mountz, a 19-year-old college student, when Newsom was 38.
In his memoir, Newsom called the tryst with Rippey-Gibney "the stupidest and also briefest of affairs" and "the worst betrayal" of his life, framing himself, remarkably, as the one betrayed. He wrote that both he and Rippey-Gibney were drinking heavily at the time, that her marriage was "frayed," and that his own marriage to first wife Kimberly Guilfoyle was "over."
He described the affair's origin this way: Rippey-Gibney attended a party at his apartment with other staffers. She was the last to leave.
His sister, Hillary Newsom, wrote in the memoir that she "could see a connection sparking" between the two and gave Rippey-Gibney "a talking-to." The warning did not work.
After the affair became public, the Newsom operation moved quickly to define the narrative. Jennifer Siebel Newsom, then Newsom's girlfriend, now his wife, went on a blog and local news sites to call Rippey-Gibney "the culprit" and to claim she had a "checkered history."
In comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, Siebel Newsom said:
"I have tried to see Ruby's side of the story but unfortunately everyone near to her has stories and says she is bad news."
She later apologized for those remarks. But the pattern was already set: Rippey-Gibney was cast as the problem, not the sitting mayor who had slept with his friend's wife on his own staff.
Rippey-Gibney, meanwhile, entered rehab for alcohol and cocaine issues. She has since remarried. The governor who oversaw the affair emerged with his career intact, and climbing. The questions about Jennifer Siebel Newsom's own conduct would come much later, in a different context.
One detail from the aftermath deserves particular attention. After the scandal broke, Newsom publicly claimed to have sought substance abuse treatment, a move that earned him sympathy and suggested accountability.
He later admitted to the Sacramento Bee that he never actually entered rehab. He said he had simply stopped drinking for a period before resuming. The gap between the public claim and the private reality is the kind of discrepancy that matters when a politician asks voters to trust his character.
It also fits a broader pattern. Newsom has faced serious scrutiny over his inner circle's integrity. His former chief of staff pleaded guilty to federal crimes, raising hard questions about who the governor surrounds himself with and what he knows about their conduct.
Rippey-Gibney has spoken publicly about the affair only sparingly. During Newsom's 2018 run for California governor, she reflected on the episode, writing that she had been going through a difficult period in her life but felt she was a grown woman who had not been taken advantage of.
That measured tone may or may not carry into her Vanity Fair account. The details of the upcoming piece, its length, its specific claims, its publication date, remain unknown. What is known is that Rippey-Gibney has never had the kind of platform Vanity Fair provides, and Newsom has never faced an account of the affair he did not shape himself.
His memoir gave him the first-mover advantage. He chose the quotes. He set the context. He decided that calling the affair "the worst betrayal" of his life, rather than, say, of Alex Tourk's life, was the right framing. Now someone else gets to frame it.
The governor already faces a federal investigation he and his wife have publicly acknowledged. Newsom has framed the DOJ probe as political persecution, though reporting has shown the investigation began under the Biden administration. Separately, millions in donations flowed to Jennifer Siebel Newsom's nonprofit as that probe intensified.
The 2005 affair destroyed at least one career and one marriage that were not Gavin Newsom's. Alex Tourk, Newsom's close friend and campaign manager, lost both his professional relationship with the mayor and his marriage. Rippey-Gibney went to rehab. Newsom went to the governor's mansion.
That asymmetry is worth sitting with. In the years since, Newsom has written a memoir, run California, and positioned himself for a White House bid. The woman his own wife publicly called "the culprit" and "bad news" stayed largely out of public view.
Whatever Rippey-Gibney's Vanity Fair article ultimately says, its mere existence is a reminder that political narratives are only as durable as the silence of the people who lived them. Newsom controlled this story for nearly twenty years. He may not control the next chapter.
And Newsom has acknowledged publicly that the DOJ is investigating both him and his wife, a fact that adds legal weight to a season already heavy with political risk.
The Newsom affair story follows a template that voters have seen before from ambitious politicians: admit just enough to survive, blame the circumstances, claim personal growth, and move on. The press conference tears. The vague reference to treatment. The memoir that repackages the scandal as a lesson learned.
It works, until the other person in the room decides to talk.
Rippey-Gibney's decision to speak now, through a major national publication, suggests she believes the version Newsom put in print does not tell the whole story. Whether her account changes the political calculus for Newsom's presidential ambitions remains to be seen. But the fact that she felt compelled to offer one tells voters something the memoir didn't.
When a politician writes his own history, it's called leadership. When the people he wronged start writing theirs, it's called accountability.