Gavin Newsom’s Former Mistress Spills Tea on Their Torrid Affair

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former lover has re-entered the spotlight with a Tuesday op-ed describing her relationship with him and the struggles she faced as a result.

Ruby Rippey, 54, wrote a piece for Vanity Fair in which she broke nearly two decades of silence as the governor is paving the groundwork for a presidential campaign.

In her essay, Rippey describes how Newsom, who was her boss and San Francisco’s mayor at the time, moved her desk closer to his office and how the relationship developed while she was married to his close friend and deputy chief of staff, Alex Tourk. 

She recounts the start of her affair with Newsom at a July 2005 Napa Valley wedding, where heavy drinking led to sexually charged moments and a night that ended with her blacking out. “My boss and I end up in the narrow hallway outside the bathroom at the same time. We wait, across from each other. The space is tight. The silence stretches. He slips his hands into his tan trouser pockets and smiles—his usual shy, aw-shucks smile. I say nothing. I hold his gaze longer than I should,” she wrote. 

Amid a spiraling cocaine and alcohol addiction, Ruby Rippey had an affair with Gavin Newsom, who was at the time the mayor of San Francisco and her boss. Twenty years later, she writes about the fallout—and piecing her life back together https://t.co/eOb06TH6aI

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) July 28, 2026

Rippey later woke beside him after passing out. “I wake the next morning beside him, still dressed. I am cold, almost shivering, and my dress—the one my mother warned me not to wear—is soaked from the waist down. I had passed out. I had also wet the bed,” she wrote.

Rippey details ongoing encounters at Newsom’s Russian Hill penthouse, a North Beach bar and the W Hotel in Los Angeles, amid her spiraling alcohol and cocaine use. “We meet and we drink. There is sex, but it isn’t the point. The point is proximity—to power, to being chosen, to feeling newly visible—no longer muted by pregnancy, by new motherhood, by the strain of white-knuckling long stretches of sobriety,” she wrote. 

She frames the dynamic as one in which Newsom’s irresponsible use of his power. “Power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist. 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,” she wrote. 

She also challenges Newsom’s memoir account that he came clean to Tourk about sleeping with his wife, saying it gives him credit for something she had already done.

The affair began in 2005 while Newsom was mayor and Rippey served as his appointments secretary. Newsom had publicly admitted the relationship in a 2007 City Hall news conference after Tourk learned of it and resigned as campaign manager.

Ruby Rippey repeatedly acknowledges her own culpability in her affair with Gavin Newsom, but based on her essay yesterday in Vanity Fair, let’s talk about what was really going on.

Ruby was the proverbial wounded deer.

She was a new mother dealing with post partum issues… pic.twitter.com/3j1V7MrXWE

— Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) July 29, 2026

Newsom described the episode in his recent memoir as the stupidest and briefest of affairs and the worst betrayal of his life. Rippey ended the relationship around the time she entered rehab in 2006. She later confessed to Tourk by email in January 2007 and the scandal became public the following month.

The relationship unfolded over months while Rippey struggled with addiction. She and Tourk shared a young son. Tourk confronted Newsom after the email confession, resigned, and the story dominated local and national coverage. Newsom held a press conference stating everything reported was true and expressing deep regret. 

Of course, he went on to win reelection as mayor that year. Rippey has said she is now more than 20 years sober, has rebuilt aspects of her life including co-parenting, and wrote the essay in part after seeing how the episode was framed in Newsom’s memoir.

As Newsom is gearing up for his presidential run, he is working to appeal to a wider swath of voters and has even pretended to move further to the center. With this essay, Rippey may have given Republicans a weapon to use against him during the campaign.

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