[California Globe] There is a lot of smoke swirling around Gavin Newsom — the affair with secretary just one episode If he had the Media Protective Coverage gifted to frontrunners, this would've been smothered. He's toast. Oily toast.
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."
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."
#4
He’s a bigger dirt bag than I gave him credit for.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/31/2026 8:33 Comments ||
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#5
Looks like the media want some one else to be the 2028 Democratic Presidential nominee, probably Kamala. The infighting among the Democrat wanting the nomination should be fun to watch.
#9
#7 - Fox sez: Property records show the home where she was found dead is owned by Conan Harris, Pressley's husband. There's no indication that the house's ownership is connected to Yoseliani Ann Marte Ocasio's death.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2026 12:04 Comments ||
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#10
For all I know, Democrats could have somebody waiting in the wings for 2028. It would be foolish to assume that they don't. I give you the example of Bill Clinton in 1992 whose experience in government was as governor of Arkansas, a state that does not receive much attention from the national media. I think Clinton and Newsom have a lot in common. They are both handsome and charismatic, smart and ambitious. Hell, you could even say the same about Baraq Obama. They are all slimy, perverted and crooked as they can be. I think the clinical term is sociopath. Anybody the Democrats might have waiting in the wings is likely to be pretty much the same. You wouldn't know it from your TV or newspapers but, after all, the Democrat Party is a snake pit. It's the party of perversion and corruption.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/31/2026 12:56 Comments ||
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#11
Ruby Rippey is a friend-of-a-friend, and I spoke with her online once years ago. She privately confirmed then what you are reading here: Newsom was sexualy taking advantage of his best friend's alcoholic wife who also had drug problems. That's the kind of man he is and, if he's president, the American people will get to be Ruby Rippey
Gov. Gavin Newsom released years of long-awaited tax returns Friday, revealing California’s first family wasn’t just paying hefty tax bills — they were also shelling out nearly $200,000 for household staff, writing off $45,000 worth of Armani clothing and subsidizing the first partner’s film company that consistently hemorrhaged money.
Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom paid nearly $200,000 in wages to household employees in 2024, in addition to paying employment taxes for domestic workers and babysitters, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The couple’s returns also show Siebel Newsom’s production company, Girls Club Entertainment, continued losing money. In 2022, the company lost about $37,000, while Siebel Newsom reported earning just $11,700 from the business, according to the Times. Meanwhile, Siebel Newsom has been collecting $150,000 from her nonprofit, The Representation Project, to promote those films and other initiatives.
Newsom himself collected $70,000 in author income in 2023 and another $75,000 in 2024, though The Times said it was unclear whether the payments stemmed from his recently published memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” or other publishing projects.
The returns also show the Newsoms’ wardrobe has also doubled as a tax write-off.
In 2022, the Newsoms donated Armani business attire they originally purchased for about $45,000 to an Oakland restorative justice nonprofit. On their tax filings, they estimated the clothes’ thrift-store value at $4,900, according to the Times.
Overall, the Newsoms donated between $40,000 and $67,000 to charity each year during the four-year period.
The filings show that Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom earned between $1.7 million and $2 million annually from 2022 through 2024, according to an Associated Press review of the returns. The Times reported that the couple paid nearly $2.8 million in federal income taxes and about $500,000 in California income taxes over the four-year period covered by the filings.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
