Gov. Gavin Newsom's former mistress has broken her silence in a detailed first-person essay, and the account puts his wife's past blame-the-other-woman comments in a harsh new light.

Ruby Rippey, the former aide who had a sexual affair with Newsom when he was San Francisco's mayor, published the essay in Vanity Fair on Tuesday. In it, she described the months-long relationship that began in July 2005, acknowledged her own role, and pushed back directly against public statements made by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who was Newsom's girlfriend at the time the affair became public in 2007 and is now California's first lady.

Siebel Newsom, a former Hollywood actress who later built a public identity as a feminist filmmaker and women's advocate, had told the San Francisco Chronicle after the scandal broke that "the woman is the culprit." She also posted comments on SFist, a local San Francisco news site, calling Rippey "bad news" and minimizing the affair itself. Those remarks, and the gap between them and Siebel Newsom's later feminist branding, are at the center of Rippey's response.

Siebel Newsom blamed the aide, not the mayor who employed her

When the affair became public in 2007, Siebel Newsom did not direct her criticism at Newsom. She aimed it at Rippey, who at the time was married to Newsom's close friend and campaign manager, Alex Tourk, and served as Newsom's appointments secretary. Rippey held no political power. Newsom held all of it.

Siebel Newsom told the Chronicle: "I shouldn't say this, but...if people did research into the scandal...the woman is the culprit." On SFist, she went further, writing that she was "a total woman's woman, girls girl" and questioning whether the relationship even qualified as an affair:

"What's your definition of affair?...it was a few nothing incidents when she showed up passed out outside of his door...she is bad news."

In another post, Siebel Newsom framed Newsom as a victim of circumstance, citing "crises, divorce, the loss of his mother, the pressures of being mayor, etc." and describing him as "vulnerable and lonely." The comments shifted blame entirely onto the subordinate and excused the man who ran the city.

Siebel Newsom later apologized for the SFist comments after public blowback, though the specific timing and nature of that apology are not detailed in available reporting.

Rippey accepts responsibility, and names the power gap Siebel Newsom ignored

Rippey's Vanity Fair essay does not cast herself as blameless. She writes plainly that she chose to pursue the relationship. But she also frames the affair through the lens of a workplace power imbalance that Siebel Newsom's public comments erased entirely.

Rippey wrote in the essay:

"Still, the [#MeToo] reckoning exposed what I had missed: Power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist. The responsibility to hold the line belongs to the one who holds it. That didn't happen. But I didn't stumble into the space left open, I saw a possibility and went for it."

She added: "Both things are true: I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly."

That last line lands hard. Rippey was a city employee. Newsom was the mayor. The affair ended when Rippey entered rehab for alcohol and cocaine abuse she says she was struggling with during the relationship. Newsom went on to become lieutenant governor and then governor. He described the episode in his memoir, "Young Man in a Hurry," as the "stupidest and briefest of affairs."

Rippey's essay directly challenges that characterization. The affair, she writes, began after the two locked eyes in a narrow hallway at a July 2005 wedding and continued for several months, not a fleeting lapse. The broader fractures inside the Democratic Party have made the Newsoms' carefully cultivated public image a riper target than it might have been a decade ago.

Kamala Harris reportedly advised Rippey to stay quiet

One of the more striking details in the essay involves Kamala Harris, who was then San Francisco's district attorney. Fox News reported that Rippey's account describes Harris reaching out privately after the scandal broke, not to condemn Newsom's conduct, but to counsel Rippey against speaking publicly or pursuing a book deal.

Rippey recounts Harris telling her: "I wouldn't say anything right now, Ruby. Just pause. More time will give you better perspective."

Rippey labels Harris a "real girl's girl" in the essay, a phrase that reads as pointed, given that the advice amounted to protecting a powerful male politician's career by keeping the woman who could embarrass him off the record. Harris has not publicly addressed the account.

Rippey also disputes a claim Newsom made in his memoir. She says Newsom's book falsely credits him with confessing the affair to her then-husband Alex Tourk, when in fact she had already told Tourk herself. That detail, if accurate, suggests Newsom shaped the narrative after the fact to cast himself in a more honorable light.

A feminist brand built on top of blame-the-woman comments

The contradiction at the center of this story is not complicated. Jennifer Siebel Newsom went on to build a public career around feminist advocacy and challenging the way powerful men treat women. Before that, when her own husband's conduct with a female subordinate became public, she blamed the subordinate, publicly, repeatedly, and in terms designed to humiliate.

She called Rippey "bad news." She questioned whether the affair was even real. She described the encounters as "a few nothing incidents" involving a woman who "showed up passed out outside of his door." She framed Newsom as the victim of personal crises, not as the boss who slept with an employee married to his own campaign manager.

Rippey, in her essay, noted the shift without subtlety:

"I have seen commentary about myself before, speculation, condemnation, the occasional defense. That is not new. What is new is his girlfriend entering the record, someone who came into his life after the affair."

The ideological contradictions within the party Newsom represents have only grown sharper in recent years, as Republican critics have sharpened their attacks on what they describe as a gap between progressive rhetoric and progressive conduct.

At the time of the affair, Newsom was separated from his then-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Rippey was married to Tourk. The affair's exposure in 2007 created serious political difficulties for Newsom, though he ultimately survived them and continued his rise through California politics. The personal wreckage fell on the people with less power, Rippey and Tourk.

Democratic leaders have faced increasing scrutiny over whether their stated values hold up under pressure, a dynamic that has played out across multiple fronts in recent months. The Newsom affair story, nearly two decades old, lands differently now, not because the facts have changed, but because the people involved spent years building public identities that the facts contradict.

Open questions the Newsoms have not answered

Neither Gavin Newsom nor Jennifer Siebel Newsom has publicly responded to Rippey's Vanity Fair essay. Whether they choose to do so may depend on how much attention the piece draws, but the specific claims Rippey makes about Siebel Newsom's public comments are not in dispute. The Chronicle interview and the SFist posts are part of the public record.

What remains unclear is whether Siebel Newsom's later apology for the SFist comments addressed the substance of what she said or merely the tone. Rippey's essay suggests the damage was done either way.

Accountability is supposed to mean something in the circles where the Newsoms operate. When a self-described feminist's first instinct was to shame the woman with less power and shield the man with more, the label does not describe a principle, it describes a brand.