Governor Gavin Newsom's office dismissed Ruby Rippey's detailed public account of their 2005 affair as old news he already addressed, but her essay directly challenges the version Newsom put in his own memoir.

Rippey, Newsom's former appointments secretary, published a lengthy essay recounting the affair that nearly ended his political career when he was mayor of San Francisco. She described breaking her sobriety at a wedding in 2005, ending up in a hallway with Newsom, dipping her toes in a hot tub with him, and riding in his town car to The Carneros Inn while he massaged her feet. She wrote that she woke the next morning with fragmented memory, soaked from the waist down.

Newsom's office responded with a two-sentence statement that treated the matter as settled. A spokesperson told the New York Post:

"The governor acknowledged his role and publicly apologized for his conduct nearly two decades ago when he was still mayor. In the time since, he met his wife, started a family and has focused on serving Californians."

The statement added that Newsom "addressed this chapter of his life, including in his memoir, and out of respect for everyone involved, does not have anything further to add."

That memoir is exactly where Rippey found reason to speak up.

Rippey says Newsom's memoir rewrites who told the truth first

In his memoir, published this year, Newsom described the affair in passing. He wrote that "Ruby was drinking too much and so was I," and that she "was among a group of staffers who came to my apartment for a party. She was the last to leave. It was the stupidest and also briefest of affairs."

He also wrote that his sister observed Rippey was "hanging a bit too close." And he noted that "a year later, to her credit, Ruby decided to come clean to her twelve-step group."

Rippey read those pages and objected. In her essay, she wrote that a "familiar feeling returns, the one of being written about by someone who assumes I won't answer." She took particular issue with Newsom's framing of who disclosed the affair to her then-husband, Alex Tourk, Newsom's close friend and top aide at the time.

Rippey wrote:

"That detail, subtle but significant, is the one that stays with me. It reads, to me, at least, as a version of events that gives him credit for something I had already done. Technically defensible, perhaps, but one that leaves the unmistakable impression that he, not I, was the one who told Alex the truth."

In other words, Rippey contends she was the one who came forward to her husband, and that Newsom's memoir quietly implies otherwise. Newsom's office did not address that specific dispute in its statement.

An affair that almost ended a career now shadows a presidential bid

When the affair became public, Newsom held a press conference publicly confessing his relationship with the wife of one of his closest aides. The revelation created serious political trouble for Newsom early in his tenure as San Francisco's mayor. Tourk, who had served as Newsom's top aide, was married to Rippey at the time.

Newsom survived politically. He went on to serve as California's governor and is now termed out, with reports describing him as eyeing a 2028 presidential run. That ambition gives Rippey's account a sharper edge. A tell-all essay from a former affair partner is an inconvenience for any politician. For one positioning himself for a national campaign, it is a liability that requires more than a two-sentence statement about having "moved on."

Newsom's political fortunes are already complicated. He faces a federal corruption probe that has drawn significant scrutiny, and his administration has drawn criticism on multiple fronts.

The governor has tried to frame the DOJ investigation as politically motivated, though reporting has shown the inquiry began before the current administration took office.

Meanwhile, his standing within the Democratic Party is far from settled. Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris have been described as locked in a dead heat as the party sorts out its direction heading into 2028.

Newsom's memoir minimized what Rippey now describes in full

The contrast between the two accounts is hard to miss. Newsom's memoir devoted limited space to the affair and characterized it as "the stupidest and also briefest of affairs." He placed the encounter in the context of a staff party at his apartment, where Rippey "was the last to leave." He attributed the drinking to both of them.

Rippey's version is more granular. She describes the specific sequence of events at the wedding, breaking sobriety, ending up alone with Newsom in a hallway, the hot tub, the town car ride, arriving at The Carneros Inn. She describes waking with gaps in her memory. And she specifically disputes the implication in Newsom's memoir about who disclosed the affair to Tourk.

Newsom's office chose not to engage with any of those details. The statement made no mention of Rippey's specific claims, did not address the discrepancy over who told Tourk, and did not respond to her characterization that the memoir gave Newsom "credit for something I had already done."

The governor's approach, acknowledge the affair happened, call it old news, decline further comment, is a standard political containment strategy. Whether it holds depends on whether voters considering a 2028 candidate care about the gap between what Newsom wrote in his memoir and what the other person in the room remembers.

California's political landscape is already turbulent heading into the next governor's race, and Newsom's personal and legal baggage adds weight to an already crowded field of problems.

Newsom wants voters to believe this chapter is closed. Rippey just reopened it, and his silence on the specifics says more than his spokesperson's two sentences ever could.