Gavin Newsom’s Predatory Behavior Coming Home to Roost

In 2005, while mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom had a months-long extramarital sexual affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, his appointments secretary. She was married at the time to Alex Tourk, Newsom’s close friend, former deputy chief of staff, and later re-election campaign manager.

Ruby Rippey’s Vanity Fair op-ed, “How I Blew Up—Then Rebuilt—My Life,” published Tuesday July 28, 2026, is a personal history in which Rippey recounts her months-long affair with then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, her struggles with alcoholism and cocaine use, rehab, the 2007 public scandal, and how she rebuilt her life afterward.

The affair and scandal prompted Tourk’s resignation, raised questions about workplace power dynamics, and threatened Newsom’s political future. Despite the controversy, Newsom won reelection as mayor later that year and eventually rose to become governor of California, Newsweek reported.

Rippey also criticizes Gavin Newsom’s own memoir, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, and his characterization of the affair as “the briefest of affairs” and especially the claim that he “came clean” to Alex Tourk.

Rippey says she confessed of the affair to her husband first in an email, yet Newsom takes credit for that.

Ruby Rippey is now 20 years sober.

Gavin Newsom was her boss. He was a powerful man and San Francisco Mayor, and she was his appointments secretary – a classic power imbalance used by a predator.

It’a a classic because a harasser in a position of power leverages their standing against lower-level employees.

Rippey takes full responsibility for her involvement and admits that she was a hot mess, abusing alcohol and eventually cocain. She ended up in rehab.

Newsweek reports:

…she argues the relationship was fueled less by romance than by the allure of influence and status associated with one of California’s rising political stars. She writes that the experience was about feeling “chosen” and describes the attraction as connected to “proximity to power.”

“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 wrote.

“It isn’t love. It isn’t romance. It’s intoxication. The text message is a hit. The glance across the hallway, a hit. The risk floods my bloodstream.”

and

In her account, Rippey explicitly rejects the idea that she was powerless or lacked agency, writing, “I was not coerced. I knew what I was doing.”

She knew what she was doing, and she was abusing alcohol and drugs. Newsom was her boss – and her husband’s best friend. Shakespeare wrote of these dangerous entanglements, which rarely ended well for either party.

The bottom line starts at Gavin Newsom’s door – he was the boss, the Mayor, the Big Kahuna. The Predator in Chief.

Flash forward to November 2021 – the Globe reported, Rumors of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s involvement with one of his cabinet staff members persisted since March 2021. We noted this because this same rumor played into Gov. Newsom’s 2021 disappearance from the public, and his cancellation of the UN Climate Change conference.

Another Newsom employee was rumored to be the object of Gavin Newsom’s affections.

“The Globe was set to publish a story about Newsom’s rumored involvement with a staff member in March 2021 when news and gossip began to percolate about the identity of the alleged mistress,” we reported. “The Globe got a tip that she was Deputy Chief of Staff Lindsey Cobia. We immediately noticed something interesting. Ms. Cobia’s name had begun to trend on Google, along with related queries such as ‘gavin newsom, ‘newsom affair’ and ‘gavin newsom affair.’ While that is certainly not proof of an affair, from the point of view of describing the buzz among California’s political reporters, it was evidence that the Globe was not alone in checking out Ms. Cobia, whom the governor promoted just five days prior, as the push to recall him reached fever pitch in March.”

“Recently, Gov. Newsom appeared to have been missing in action for at least 10 days following his last public appearance on October 27th, when he received a coronavirus booster shot. Then, only two days later on October 29th, citing ‘family obligations,’ Gov. Gavin Newsom abruptly cancelled his much anticipated trip to Scotland to attend the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the Globe reported.”

“The Globe received a credible tip from an even more credible source that it was Mrs. Newsom, the First Partner, who cancelled the big international trip to Glasgow because she discovered that the governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff Lindsey Cobia was on the list of the governor’s staff traveling to the Scotland UN conference.”

There is a lot of smoke swirling around Gavin Newsom – he and the First Partner are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Globe reported on the long list of dubious financial dealings by California’s first couple. “The Globe’s reporting has consistently highlighted how vendors and donors connected to the Newsom orbit have profited handsomely while the First Partner’s nonprofit extracted millions through salaries and licensing fees from an organization she controls.”

The Globe has reported on many questionable personal financial issues with the Newsoms, including their two large mansions, secretively purchased by shady LLCs only days before closing. Where did the money come from?

There have even been more recent rumors of dangerous liaisons.

Predatory behavior correlates to unbalanced traits, often associated with narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, including a tendency to see predatory sexual actions as healthy or usual. These characteristics include the following:

• Lack of concern for the well-being of others
• Superficial social charm
• Self-absorption
• Limited empathy
• Impulsivity
• Manipulative tendencies

Think back to Gov. Newsom’s behaviors during Covid – lack of concern for the well-being of others, limited empathy, self-absorption, and manipulative tendencies come to mind. I sat through his tedious daily press briefings for three years, done on Zoom instead of in person, where he ignored reasonable questions about the irrationality of his tyrannical decisions. He ended questions altogether, and instead delivered his latest dictates: masking, vaxxing, locked down businesses, schools, churches. He created bizarre color-coded levels for reopening, based on testing, and not actual deaths, during his unwarranted, cruel, evil covid statewide lockdowns.

Thanksgiving 2020, Gov. Newsom issued orders to residents  to “Stay home, no singing, no shouting, no music, no parties, eat outside and keep a mask on.”

Governor Newsom actually told the people of California they could not sing. Newsom told the people of California they could not laugh out loud or shout. He outlawed parties and music and dancing. Newsom told families gathering around the Thanksgiving table to do it outside – in winter.

Just more of his lack of concern for the well-being of others, limited empathy, self-absorption, and manipulative tendencies on full display.

In 2007, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom publicly acknowledged the affair, apologized, and blamed his own alcohol use, and announced he would stop drinking and seek professional treatment.

“My problems with alcohol are not an excuse for my personal lapses in judgment,” he was reported stating at the time. “Upon reflection with friends and family this weekend, I have come to the conclusion that I will be a better person without alcohol in my life.”

News outlets reported Newsom entered alcohol rehab.

However, when he was running for California Governor in 2018, he admitted to the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board he resumed drinking occasionally after a period of abstinence and never went to rehab.

“No, there’s no rehab. I just stopped,” he said, according to the Bee. “There was no treatment, no nothing related to any of that stuff. I stopped because I thought it was a good thing to stop.”