Essay

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, by the strain of white-knuckling long stretches of sobriety,” she writes. “It isn’t love. It isn’t romance. It’s intoxication.”

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, said on Tuesday that Newsom acknowledged his role and publicly apologized for the affair nearly two decades ago.

“In the time since, he met his wife, started a family and has focused on serving Californians. He addressed this chapter of his life, including in his memoir, and out of respect for everyone involved, does not have anything further to add,” Gardon said.

The affair occurred while Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco.

(San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers)

Newsom faced renewed criticism for the affair during the 2018 governor’s race amid a larger reckoning over sexual misconduct in politics, corporate America and Hollywood. But Rippey has said she doesn’t see herself as a victim of a powerful man.

“Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-yr old adult married woman & mother. (I also happened to have an unfortunate inclination towards drinking-to-excess & self-destruction.),” she wrote on Facebook at the time.

She still doesn’t place blame on the governor for what happened, but noted in her essay that in the post-#MeToo era she came to realize that her then-boss had a responsibility to “hold the line.”

“That didn’t happen. But I didn’t stumble into the space left open — I saw a possibility and went for it,” she writes. “Both things are true: I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly.”

For Newsom, she writes, the affair is merely a “footnote in a longer arc of ascent. For me, it is the fracture that split my life into before and after.”

In his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery,” published this year, Newsom acknowledges the liaison with Rippey, describing it as “the briefest of affairs.”

He also writes that he admitted the betrayal to Tourk, a detail that Rippey takes issue with in her essay. She says she was the one who first broke the devastating news to her husband via email while she was at her parent’s house in Napa and he was home in San Francisco with their young son.

“But resentment is a luxury I can’t afford,” she writes. “Instead, I return to gratitude, not for the affair, not for the pain I caused Alex, but for the totality of what followed. I required something catastrophic to change direction. Something that made the cost of going back — of drinking again — unthinkable.”

After the affair, Rippey and Tourk divorced but continued to co-parent their son, who is now an adult. She’s been sober for 20 years, she writes, remarried and now has a son with her second husband.

“The damage was mine,” she writes at the conclusion of her essay. “But so is the life rebuilt in its wake.”

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

With this year’s theme as ‘Red card to child labour: Fair play for children, decent work for adults’, the campaign for World Day Against Child Labour advocates for stronger action on quality education, social protection, decent work, stronger laws and enforcement across the world, as well as other measures that address the root causes of child labour.

A survey in 2022 by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment of Nigeria revealed that about 24.67 million children in Nigeria, who represent 39.2 per cent of the country’s youth, aged 5 to 17, are engaged in child labour. About 22.9 per cent of the children are engaged in hazardous work. 

The Child Rights Act of 2023, a legislation that protects children and young adults in Nigeria, frowns at the involvement of children in any form of labour that is harmful to their development. While the minimum age for employment is 15, the Act states that the work must not interfere with the children’s education.

According to the Child Rights Act, no child must lift or move anything heavy that might affect their physical health or social development. Also, no child must be employed in an industrial setting that is not registered as a technical school or similar approved institution.

Mandy Moore shared her take on the drama swirling around her celebrity mommy group, months after fellow child actor Ashley Tisdale shaded the bunch in scathing essay last winter.

The “This Is Us” star and mother of three, during a recent appearance on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show “Radio Andy,” said she found the former “Suite Life of Zack & Cody” star’s article “very upsetting” and that it shocked both herself and fellow mommy group member Hilary Duff. “We have both grown up in this business and had people dissect who we are and the choices we make and all of that,” Moore, 42, told the Bravo host, “but this was something altogether different and decidedly way more upsetting … because it just cuts to the core.”

In December, New York magazine published “High School Musical” star Tisdale French’s essay for its “It’s Been a Year” series. The actor’s piece, titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,” accused other group members of snubbing Tisdale French from various gatherings and group chats. “‘This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore,’” Tisdale French, who shares two children with composer Christopher French, recalled texting the group.

As Tisdale French’s essay sparked speculation online about the identity of the group members, Duff’s husband Matthew Koma appeared to confirm his wife’s membership in a since-expired Instagram story post throwing the shade right back at Tisdale French.

For Moore, married to musician Taylor Goldsmith, kindness is “the most important thing” in her life, as is creating a legacy of kindness, she told Cohen. She said that she finds “anyone even insinuating that might not be the case” to be “very upsetting.” Moore said she is a “huge proponent” of addressing conflict head-on via face-to-face communication.

“‘I wouldn’t have handled the situation this way,’” she recalled feeling about the essay. Moore did not mention Tisdale French by name.

Moore said she also felt the scandalous essay “perpetuates this silly trope that women can’t be supportive of one another” and that women, specifically mothers, are “inherently petty” and committed to “one-up each other.”

“I have not felt that one iota since becoming a parent,” Moore said, adding she has formed “meaningful relationships” with other parents. She further stressed the importance of parents finding their community wherever they can.

Duff, 38, addressed the mommy group drama with The Times in February, telling pop music critic Mikael Wood that “this is not new for me” and she felt the situation was “escalated by the talking heads on TikTok that need clickbait.” Amid the social media chatter, Duff said her family is her focus.

”Knowing that I get to open up the back doors and play soccer as a family and take a hot tub and go get our chicken eggs — that’s the purpose of life,” she said. “On the days when crazy s— happens, I go home and quiet the noise.”