In a bombshell revelation that could haunt California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitions for higher office, his former mistress has finally broken her silence on their sordid extramarital fling.
Ruby Rippey, the one-time “lover” of Newsom, is detailing a booze-soaked relationship that began while she worked as his aide and was married to his closest confidant.
Rippey is now tearing the covers off what she describes as a months-long liaison filled with heavy drinking and secret meetings during Newsom’s tenure as mayor of San Francisco.
The timing could not be more inconvenient for the Democratic governor, who is widely reported to be weighing a 2028 White House run after years of positioning himself as a progressive standard-bearer.
According to Rippey, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris personally intervened after the affair exploded into public view in 2007, urging the young mother to keep quiet.
Rippey said Harris called her as she considered writing a memoir.
Harris told her: “I wouldn’t say anything right now, Ruby. Just pause. More time will give you better perspective.”
Rippey followed that advice for nearly two decades.
Now, with Newsom’s political future in the spotlight, she is sharing lurid details that paint a picture of power imbalances, personal betrayal, and elite Democratic damage control.
The affair kicked off in the summer of 2005.
Rippey served as an aide in Newsom’s office while her then-husband worked as the mayor’s chief of staff and close friend.
Earlier that year, Newsom and his first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, had announced their divorce.
What followed, Rippey claims, was a pattern of alcohol-fueled encounters that destroyed her marriage and sent her to rehab.
She recalled the first night with her “boss” after drinking heavily at a colleague’s wedding and leaving in his chauffeured car for a hotel.
“I wake the next morning beside him, still dressed,” she wrote.
“I am cold, almost shivering, and my dress… is soaked from the waist down. I had passed out. I had also wet the bed,” she added.
With Newsom still asleep, Rippey fled back to her husband and their year-old son.
Days later, she found her gold bracelet on her desk—the one she had left behind. Newsom had returned it.
From there, the meetings escalated. Rippey admitted she scanned Newsom’s calendar for opportunities to “happen” to cross paths with him, making sure he noticed her before slipping away.
Soon after, he texted, “Where are you?”
“But it never matters where I am because I always go to him – his penthouse in Russian Hill, a private back room in a North Beach bar, the W Hotel in Los Angeles,” she wrote.
For months, the pair met to drink and engage in sexual encounters.
Rippey eventually entered rehab, and her marriage collapsed under the weight of the deception.
In his own memoir, Newsom dismissed the relationship as “the briefest of affairs.”
Rippey accepts responsibility for her own choices amid her struggles with alcohol.
Yet she pointedly noted that the person holding power carries greater accountability.
The one who holds power has “the responsibility to hold the line… that didn’t happen.”
Newsom publicly admitted the affair in 2007, declaring everything reported was true and seeking treatment for alcohol issues.
He went on to win reelection handily and climb the political ladder.
Rippey remained largely silent until now, choosing this moment—as Newsom’s governorship winds down and presidential speculation intensifies—to offer her fuller account.
As the 2028 cycle approaches, this renewed scrutiny arrives at a delicate time.
Voters already weary of California’s progressive experiment may view the episode as further evidence that Newsom’s carefully cultivated image of competence and compassion has always papered over personal and policy failures.
Rippey’s decision to speak after following Harris’s counsel for so long raises fresh questions about what other stories the Democratic establishment has preferred to keep under wraps.
