Exclusive | Ruby Rippey-Gibney — who had affair with Gavin Newsom — penning bombshell Vanity Fair story

Ruby Rippey-Gibney — the former San Francisco City Hall aide whose affair with Gov. Gavin Newsom nearly upended his political career — will tell her side of the story for the first time in an upcoming Vanity Fair piece, The California Post has learned.

Details of the piece remain unclear, but a source familiar with the matter said Rippey-Gibney intends to recount her perspective on the affair that rocked San Francisco politics in 2007 and has remained one of the most embarrassing moments in then-mayor Newsom’s life and career.

The story comes as Newsom is widely expected to launch a 2028 presidential campaign after terming out of the governor’s office next year.

David Latterman, a San Francisco political analyst, said it’s difficult to say how damaging the piece could be to Newsom without knowing all the details. But he noted that the tenor of politics and traditional fallout from scandals has changed in large part due to the constant news cycle.

“What would be really sad is if Democrats make a bigger deal out of this than Republicans for self-flagellation,” Latterman told The Post.

Rippey-Gibney and Vanity Fair did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment about the upcoming piece.

Newsom acknowledged the affair in early 2007, after his longtime political adviser and former campaign manager Alex Tourk discovered the then-mayor had engaged in a sexual relationship with his wife Rippey-Gibney, who at the time worked as Newsom’s appointments secretary at City Hall.

Tourk, who declined The Post’s request for comment, resigned after confronting Newsom, and the mayor held a news conference apologizing publicly and describing the affair as 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.

The scandal dominated headlines across the country not only because Rippey-Gibney — who has since remarried — was married to one of Newsom’s closest political allies, but also because she worked directly for the mayor, raising questions about the power dynamics of a relationship between an elected official and a subordinate employee.

As the fallout mounted, Newsom announced he was giving up alcohol and said he would seek professional help.

“My problems with alcohol are not an excuse for my personal lapses in judgment,” he said at the time. 

“Upon reflection with friends and family this weekend, I have come to the conclusion that I will be a better person without alcohol in my life.”

News organizations widely reported that Newsom had entered an alcohol rehabilitation program. But during his 2018 campaign for governor, he told The Sacramento Bee those reports were inaccurate.

Newsom said he never checked into rehab. Instead, he said he sought counseling from Delancey Street Foundation president Mimi Silbert, stopped drinking for a period of time and later resumed consuming alcohol.

“No, there’s no rehab. I just stopped,” Newsom told the newspaper. “There was no treatment, no nothing related to any of that stuff. I stopped because I thought it was a good thing to stop.”

He added that the scandal permanently changed him.

“Sometimes people make mistakes in their lives and you then work hard never to make them again, because you learn from them,” Newsom said. 

“I like to think I’m a better person, and I like to think that a lot of people have made mistakes, we just don’t read about them.”

Newsom had been married to prosecutor and future Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle from 2001 until early 2006, roughly a year before the affair became public. The couple separated in 2004. Newsom detailed his romantic escapades as a single mayor of San Francisco in his recently released memoir.

Despite predictions that the scandal would destroy his political future, Newsom survived and won reelection as mayor later in 2007. He was elected lieutenant governor in 2010 and governor of California in 2018, becoming one of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile figures.

The scandal also tested Newsom’s fledgling relationship with his future wife, filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The two began dating in late 2006, just months before his affair with Rippey-Gibney became public. Siebel Newsom ultimately stood by him, and the couple married in 2008.

But shortly after the scandal erupted, Siebel Newsom had harsh words.

“I shouldn’t say this, but there are two sides to every story,” Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle. “If people did research into the scandal … the woman is the culprit.”

Siebel Newsom would apologize shortly after that story was published.

The comments drew criticism from some observers, who argued they unfairly shifted blame onto Rippey-Gibney despite the power imbalance between a mayor and one of his employees.

Willie Brown, who preceded Newsom as mayor of San Francisco, told The Post on Wednesday that the scandal was a surprise, as he had a leading role in bringing all interested parties into City Hall.

“I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to [Rippey-Gibney], because her husband worked for me as well,” Brown said in reference to Tourk.

“I didn’t pay any attention — until after the fact.”

Brown, who is supportive of Newsom’s likely run for president, argued that voters are “no longer concerned about that kind of conduct as evidence of whether or not you’re qualified.”

Rippey-Gibney has largely avoided speaking publicly about the affair, but she briefly resurfaced during Newsom’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2018.

She wrote on Facebook that while she supported the #MeToo movement, she did not believe her relationship with Newsom belonged in that category because she considered herself a consenting adult despite working for him.

“Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-year-old adult married woman & mother,” she wrote, adding that she was struggling with alcoholism and self-destructive behavior during that period of her life.

Her upcoming Vanity Fair essay appears poised to become her most extensive public account yet.

For his part, Newsom has generally declined to revisit the specifics of the affair beyond accepting responsibility. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

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