Gavin Newsom is seemingly gearing up for a run for the White House in 2028 but not before the scandal that rocked his political career some two decades ago returns to the headlines.
The Affair
Back in 2007, then-San Francisco Mayor Newsom stood in front of television cameras to admit he had an affair with Ruby Rippey, one of his mayoral aides who also happened to be the wife of Alex Tourk, a close friend then serving as his re-election campaign manager after working as his deputy chief of staff.
Newsom was still married to his first wife Kimberly Guilfoyle, then a San Francisco prosecutor, at the time, but they were in the process of getting divorced. By the time the affair became public, Newsom was dating his now-wife Jennifer Siebel. But the revelation did not derail that relationship or his reelection chances. He went on to win the 2007 mayoral election with over 73 percent of the vote.
Rippey had remained relatively mum on the affair – until now. In a lengthy first-person essay for Vanity Fair titled “How I Blew Up—Then Rebuilt—My Life,” the 54 year old never mentions Newsom’s name but goes into great detail about their sexual escapades and her battle with drugs and alcohol after their relationship began in the summer of 2005 and lasted for months.
She recalled the July 2005 wedding she and Newsom attended for a fellow city hall staffer where they wound up in a hallway together while waiting for the bathroom. Later that night, they met again in a hot tub. Rippey described the rest of the evening as a blur but maintained that all of their sexual encounters were consensual.
“The next thing she knew, she was waking up next to him in bed having peed herself – just like every great romance,” Megyn quipped.
In the Vanity Fair essay, Rippey took issue with Newsom’s description of the relationship and its fallout in his memoir that came out earlier this year. He wrote it was the “the stupidest and also briefest of affairs” and recounted how he “came clean” to Tourk.
“That detail – subtle but significant – is the one that stays with me,” Rippey wrote. “It reads – to me, at least – as a version of events that gives him credit for something I had already done.”
Elsewhere in the piece, she described how their meetups would usually go. “I always go to him — his penthouse in Russian Hill, a private back room at a North Beach bar, the W Hotel in Los Angeles. We meet and we drink. There is sex, but it isn’t the point. The point is proximity — to power, to being chosen,” she wrote.
And yet she still revealed plenty about their intimate interludes, including a time she claimed she ripped every button off his shirt during a passionate hotel encounter.
The Reaction
Rippey explained her decision to revisit the affair after so many years in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “Until now, silence felt like the right choice. Now it feels necessary to offer a fuller account of what happened, rather than allowing a misleading account to stand as the whole story,” she wrote, adding the essay was not meant to be “a hit piece or a redemption story.”
“It’s about accountability, consequences and earning the right to tell the truth after 20 years of silence and repair,” she wrote.
A spokesperson for Newsom, meanwhile, said the outgoing governor “acknowledged his role and publicly apologized for his conduct nearly two decades ago when he was still mayor” and has “addressed this chapter of his life, including in his memoir.” The statement went to say that “out of respect for everyone involved,” Newsom “does not have anything further to add.”
Does It Matter?
Rippey’s choice to kiss and tell has many wondering what impact, if any, this will have on Newsom’s presumed presidential aspirations. On Wednesday’s show, National Review’s Rich Lowry said he doesn’t see it moving the needle.
“Look, I think it was a very messy period from Gavin Newsom’s life. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more where that came from. But we’re just so beyond this kind of thing being disqualifying or even a problem, really, in national politics,” he said.
The fact that this affair began and ended over 20 years at this point and Rippey is not accusing Newsom of any kind of sexual misconduct also factors into the equation, in Lowry’s view.
“It was a long time ago. If this is two years ago, [maybe it would] be a problem,” he suggested. “If there’s anything, as we saw with [Graham] Platner, involving, you know, physical conduct or intimidation or abuse, that can be a deal killer. But this kind of thing won’t. He’ll just say, ‘I had problems back then. I’ve grown, and I’ve been happily married 20 years.'”
Megyn agreed the latest revelations won’t hurt the Golden State governor; in fact, she could see them helping him with some segment of Democrat voters.
“I am going to go on the record saying this is not going to hurt him at all. I think, sadly, if anything, it might actually help him. There might be like some women out there who find him hot; who are kind of like, let me picture the buttons coming off and a passionate affair; and it was 25 years ago, so they don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying this image,” she posited. “I think it is either a neutral or a win for him.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Lowry by tuning in to episode 1,370 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.