The woman who now styles herself as California's champion against the patriarchy once blamed a struggling female aide for her husband's affair — and the aide just went public with the receipts. Ruby Rippey, the former appointments secretary who carried on an affair with then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2005, published a first-person essay in Vanity Fair on Tuesday that exposes the staggering double standard of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who publicly castigated Rippey while excusing the powerful man who actually owed accountability.
Why it matters: The same elite class that lectures ordinary Americans about toxic masculinity, power dynamics, and believing women routinely circles the wagons when one of their own is the offender. Siebel Newsom built a career as a feminist filmmaker and activist. But when her future husband cheated on her with his employee — his close friend's wife — she didn't blame the man with the power. She blamed the woman.
After the affair exploded into public view in 2007, Siebel Newsom, who was dating Newsom at the time, told the San Francisco Chronicle: "I shouldn't say this, but…if people did research into the scandal…the woman is the culprit." She left comments on the local news site SFist calling herself a "girl's girl" while branding Rippey "bad news" and dismissing the affair as "a few nothing incidents when she showed up passed out outside of his door." Newsom, she wrote, was merely going through "crises — divorce, the loss of his mother, the pressures of being mayor, etc. and he was vulnerable and lonely."
The New York Post reported Siebel Newsom apologized after blowback. The New York Times, by contrast, made no mention of Siebel Newsom's comments, framing the story instead around Rippey's personal account and the timing with Newsom's potential 2028 presidential run — burying the hypocrisy angle entirely.
Rippey, who was struggling with alcohol and cocaine abuse at the time of the affair, was married to Alex Tourk, Newsom's close friend and campaign manager. Tourk resigned after learning of the betrayal. Newsom later called it the "stupidest and briefest of affairs" in his memoir.
Rippey wrote that she was a grown woman who consented but acknowledged the power dynamic the #MeToo reckoning later exposed: "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."
The essay comes as Newsom finishes his final year as California governor and lays groundwork for a possible presidential run. The Times noted that detail. What the Times didn't note is the pattern: powerful men face no real consequences, and the women who later posture as feminist champions help ensure they never do.
The open question is whether the same voters who watched the elite class protect its own in 2007 will buy the morality act in 2028.
