Ruby Rippey breaks cover after salacious essay exposed Gavin Newsom affair details

Ruby Rippey, the former lover of Gov. Gavin Newsom who reignited one of California’s biggest political scandals with a bombshell Vanity Fair essay Tuesday, was spotted walking her dog just hours after the story went viral.

Dressed casually, Rippey appeared carefree and relaxed as she enjoyed a sunny afternoon near her Marin County home following publication of the essay, which thrust her decades-old affair with Newsom back into the national spotlight.

Rippey served as an aide to Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco and was married at the time to his campaign manager and close friend, Alex Tourk.

In the essay, Rippey accuses Newsom of sanitizing one of the defining scandals of his political career, arguing the governor reshaped key details of their affair in his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” which was released as the governor is widely expected to mount a 2028 presidential campaign.

Newsom described the relationship as “the stupidest and also briefest of affairs,” writing that Rippey “was among a group of staffers who came to my apartment for a party. She was the last to leave.”

But Rippey said reading the memoir left her with “a familiar feeling … of being written about by someone who assumes I won’t answer.”

“He describes it as ‘the briefest of affairs.’ His sister, he notes, observed that I was ‘hanging a bit too close,’” Rippey wrote.

Instead, the affair appears to have lasted for some time and sexual encounters occurred in multiple places and overnight stays.

She also disputed Newsom’s account of how her husband learned about the affair, challenging his suggestion that he was the one who came clean to Tourk.

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

Newsom’s office declined comment on the essay.

The affair remains one of the biggest stains of Newsom’s life and political career. Tourk resigned after confronting the mayor, who later held a news conference calling the affair a “personal lapse of judgment.”

“I want to make it clear that everything you’ve heard and read is true, and I am deeply sorry about that,” Newsom said at the time.

Rippey’s essay also renewed scrutiny of comments made by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who was dating the future governor when the affair became public and publicly placed much of the blame on Rippey.

“I shouldn’t say this, but … if people did research into the scandal … the woman is the culprit,” Siebel Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Siebel Newsom later doubled down in comments on the SFist blog despite describing herself as “a total woman’s woman.”

“I’m a total woman’s woman, girls girl … what’s your definition of affair? … It was a few nothing incidents when she showed up passed out outside of his door … she is bad news,” Siebel Newsom wrote.

She also defended Newsom, saying he was dealing with “crises — divorce, the loss of his mother, the pressures of being mayor, etc. and he was vulnerable and lonely.”

Siebel Newsom later apologized after the comments sparked backlash.

Sam Singer, a spokesman for Rippey at the time, bashed Siebel Newsom for her comments.

“Ms. Siebel is an actress. I understand her need for publicity. However, her comments are unbecoming of an actress or a lady,” Singer said.

Rippey, who has since remarried and says she has remained sober for years, wrote that the affair began in 2005 while Newsom was separated from his then-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Rippey was married to Tourk.

She acknowledged she willingly entered the relationship but said she now recognizes the power imbalance between a mayor and one of his subordinates.

“Still, the [#MeToo] 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.”

She added, “Both things are true: I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly.”

Rippey also revealed that Kamala Harris, who at that time was San Francisco’s district attorney and still years away from becoming vice president, privately reached out after the scandal broke and urged her to stay silent.

“‘Just pause,” Harris told Rippey, according to the essay. “More time will give you better perspective.’”

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