Ruby Rippey-Gibney, the former San Francisco City Hall aide who had an affair with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom nearly two decades ago, is preparing to tell her side of the story for the first time in an upcoming Vanity Fair piece, the New York Post reported. The forthcoming essay arrives as Newsom, who terms out of the governor's office next year, is widely expected to launch a 2028 presidential campaign.
Rippey-Gibney has spent the better part of 18 years in near-total public silence about the relationship that convulsed San Francisco politics in early 2007. Newsom, by contrast, has spent those years climbing from mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, and recently released a memoir in which he detailed his romantic life as a single mayor. The timing of Rippey-Gibney's decision to speak now raises an obvious question: what does she intend to say that Newsom has not?
Neither Rippey-Gibney, the governor's office, nor Vanity Fair responded to the Post's requests for comment. The essay's publication date has not been disclosed.
The scandal broke in early 2007 when Alex Tourk, Newsom's longtime political adviser and former campaign manager, discovered that his boss had carried on a sexual relationship with his wife. Rippey-Gibney served as Newsom's appointments secretary, making her a direct subordinate in City Hall. Tourk confronted Newsom and resigned.
Newsom then held a news conference and offered a terse admission.
"I want to make it clear that everything you've heard and read is true, and I am deeply sorry about that."
He described the affair as a "personal lapse of judgment." He announced he was giving up alcohol. News organizations at the time widely reported that Newsom had entered an alcohol rehabilitation program, a claim Newsom himself later disputed.
Despite the firestorm, Newsom survived politically. He won reelection as mayor of San Francisco later that same year.
During his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, Newsom sat for an interview with The Sacramento Bee and pushed back on the rehab narrative. He said he never checked into any program and instead sought counseling from Mimi Silbert, president of the Delancey Street Foundation.
"No, there's no rehab. I just stopped. There was no treatment, no nothing related to any of that stuff. I stopped because I thought it was a good thing to stop."
Newsom also offered a broader defense in that interview, casting the affair as a mistake he had learned from. "Sometimes people make mistakes in their lives and you then work hard never to make them again, because you learn from them," he told the paper. He added: "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."
The gap between the widely reported rehab story and Newsom's own denial years later has never been fully resolved. No named outlet has been identified as the source of the original rehab reports, and Newsom's account stands as his word against what he called inaccurate coverage.
That kind of discrepancy matters more now. Newsom is no longer a local mayor managing a city scandal. He is a sitting governor positioning himself for a national campaign, and the woman at the center of the story he has narrated on his own terms is about to offer a competing version. Newsom already faces a reported DOJ investigation into him and his wife, adding legal scrutiny to the political kind.
Rippey-Gibney's only significant public statement about the affair came during Newsom's 2018 gubernatorial run, when she published a Facebook post addressing the #MeToo movement's intersection with her own history. She wrote that she supported #MeToo but did not believe her relationship with Newsom belonged in that framework.
"Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-year-old adult married woman & mother."
In that same post, she disclosed that she had been struggling with alcoholism and self-destructive behavior during the period of the affair. Beyond that single Facebook statement, she has said almost nothing publicly for nearly two decades.
The forthcoming Vanity Fair essay represents a dramatic departure from that silence. What remains unclear is whether Rippey-Gibney plans to offer new factual details, challenge Newsom's version of events, or simply provide personal context she felt was missing from the public record. A source described as "familiar with the matter" confirmed the piece to the Post, but the essay's specific contents have not been disclosed.
The affair's fallout rippled through Newsom's personal life in ways that shaped his political trajectory. He had married Kimberly Guilfoyle, then a prosecutor and later a Fox News personality, in 2001. The couple separated in 2004, and their marriage ended in early 2006. Newsom began dating filmmaker Jennifer Siebel in late 2006, just months before the Rippey-Gibney affair became public.
Shortly after the scandal broke, Jennifer Siebel Newsom made comments to the San Francisco Chronicle that drew attention. "I shouldn't say this, but there are two sides to every story," she told the paper. She apologized shortly after the story was published. She stood by Newsom, and the two married in 2008.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom's role in the aftermath is worth noting because the "two sides" she referenced in 2007 may now get a fuller public airing, from the other side. Meanwhile, Newsom has faced criticism for retreating from press scrutiny as other investigations have widened around his administration.
Newsom's presidential ambitions are the backdrop that gives this story its weight. A mayor's affair in 2007 is old news. A prospective presidential candidate's affair, retold by the woman involved, on her terms, in a national magazine, is something else entirely.
Newsom has spent years controlling the narrative. His memoir detailed his romantic life as a single mayor. His 2018 interview with The Sacramento Bee reframed the rehab question. His public apology in 2007 was carefully worded. At every stage, Newsom has been the one telling the story.
Rippey-Gibney's Vanity Fair essay threatens to upend that control. And it arrives at a moment when Newsom faces scrutiny on multiple fronts. A Newsom ally reportedly wore an FBI wire during a federal corruption probe, and a California Republican has demanded an investigation into alleged misuse of state resources by the governor.
None of those matters are directly connected to the Rippey-Gibney affair. But together they form a pattern of unresolved questions surrounding a man who wants to lead the country. Voters deciding whether to trust Newsom with national power will weigh not just what he did in 2007, but how honestly he has accounted for it since.
Several things remain unknown. What specifically will Rippey-Gibney's essay contain? Will she contradict Newsom's public account, or simply fill in gaps he left open? Who is the unnamed source who confirmed the piece, and what is their relationship to Rippey-Gibney or Vanity Fair? And when will the essay be published, before or after Newsom makes any formal 2028 announcement?
The governor's office has said nothing. Rippey-Gibney has said nothing beyond what a source confirmed to the Post. Vanity Fair has said nothing.
For nearly two decades, Gavin Newsom got to be the only narrator of this chapter. That arrangement appears to be ending. Whether the Vanity Fair piece changes the political calculus or merely adds color to an old scandal, one thing is already clear: Newsom no longer gets to tell this story alone.
A man who wants the keys to the Oval Office ought to be comfortable with that. The question is whether his version holds up once someone else is finally talking.
