Aide involved in affair with Gavin Newsom in 2005 speaks out: 'Resentment is a luxury I cant afford'

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Set us as preferred An aide involved in an affair with Gavin Newsom more than 20 years ago, when he was mayor of San Francisco, detailed their relationship and her journey to sobriety in an essay published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday.Although Ruby Rippey, 54, has spoken previously about her relationship with the now-governor, her first-person essay offers the most intimate description yet of the affair.

It comes at a time when Newsom is wrapping up his final year as California governor and considering a presidential run in 2028.Rippey, who had worked as Newsom’s appointments secretary, was married to Alex Tourk, the then-mayor’s close friend, campaign manager and prior deputy chief of staff, when the affair became public in 2007.

Tourk resigned after Rippey told him that she had been sleeping with their boss, she writes.At the time, Newsom was newly divorced from Kimberly Guilfoyle and he apologized in front of a gaggle of reporters who packed his office for a news conference, admitting “everything you’ve heard and read is true.” Later, he said he was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse.In the essay, Rippey details that the affair with Newsom happened when she was a new mother and when her drinking, which had been a problem before the relationship, spiraled out of control.Rippey writes that their relationship began in July 2005 after a wedding at a Napa Valley estate and spanned months, with intermittent sexual encounters until she entered rehab in May 2006.

They met at his penthouse in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, at a private back room in a bar in North Beach and at the W Hotel in Los Angeles, she writes.“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, ...