A former City Hall aide’s tell-all essay revisits the secrecy, power and silence that once shadowed the governor’s rise.
A Governor’s Past Resurfaces
Ruby Rippey is speaking out again about a relationship from nearly two decades ago, one that once upended San Francisco City Hall and nearly derailed the career of a man now leading the nation’s most populous state. In a new personal essay published by Vanity Fair, Rippey revisits her time working as a secretary for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, describing how professional boundaries dissolved long before the public ever learned what was happening behind closed doors.
Rippey writes that she frequently rearranged her own schedule around the mayor’s, scanning his calendar for open windows and positioning herself wherever he was expected to be. She recalls a familiar pattern: a buzzing phone, a message asking where she was, and her own decision to go to him, whether that meant a hotel in Los Angeles, a quiet corner of a North Beach bar, or his residence on Russian Hill…