Aide involved in affair with Gavin Newsom in 2005 speaks out: 'Resentment is a luxury I can't afford'
Ruby Rippey refused to nurse old grievances after her 2005 affair with then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, calling resentment a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Ruby Rippey has broken her long silence. In a first-person essay published by Vanity Fair, the former aide to Gavin Newsom offers the most intimate portrait yet of their 2005 affair while he was mayor of San Francisco.
Her account arrives more than two decades later, at a moment when Newsom’s national profile continues to rise. Rather than settle scores or demand renewed attention, Rippey delivers a striking declaration: resentment is a luxury she cannot afford.
The admission cuts against the expectations that usually greet such revelations. Where others might inventory grievances or chase public validation, Rippey frames the episode as something she has chosen to leave in the past. That restraint stands out in a political culture that rewards grievance and memory-keeping.
Her essay does not sanitize the relationship or rewrite its consequences. It simply refuses to let the affair define the rest of her life or dictate her emotional ledger. The specificity of her recollection makes the refusal more notable, not less.
Newsom has never denied the affair. Yet the passage of time and the scale of his ambitions have pushed the story into the background of California’s political memory. Rippey’s decision to speak now, on her own terms and without apparent appetite for retribution, forces a quiet reckoning with how personal history travels alongside public persona.
What remains is the contrast between the raw intimacy she describes and the polished distance required of modern political life. Whether her words close the chapter or reopen old questions is now out of her hands.
Original reporting: LA Times.
Original reporting: LA Times, California.
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