Vanity Fair<\/a><\/em>, admitting, among other things, that she wet the bed during their first tryst, and that Kamala Harris encouraged her to keep quiet about the affair.<\/p>\nRippey says the flirtations with her then-boss began during a night out shortly after she gave birth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey \u2014 you look really good,\u201d she recalls Newsom saying. \u201cYou\u2019ve lost all your pregnancy weight.\u201d <\/p>\n
She adds that she was in the throes of addictive addiction at the time (Newsom has been open about his own past battles with substance abuse) and that the situation escalated shortly thereafter when both parties were drinking at a co-worker\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe meet and we drink. There is sex, but it isn\u2019t the point. The point is proximity\u2014to power, to being chosen, to feeling newly visible\u2014no longer muted by pregnancy, by new motherhood, by the strain of white-knuckling long stretches of sobriety. It isn\u2019t love. It isn\u2019t romance. It\u2019s intoxication,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n
Rippey eventually checked into rehab, and one of her counselors advised to keep the affair a secret (even from her husband) during her early sobriety.<\/p>\n
She claims that then-district attorney Kamala Harris echoed that advice.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon after, Kamala Harris calls. I know her from the [former mayor Willie] Brown administration; she is now the district attorney. I tell her people are urging me to speak publicly. A publisher has offered an advance for a memoir. I am broke and unemployable,\u201d Rippey writes, adding:<\/p>\n
\u201cShe listens, then says simply: \u2018I wouldn\u2019t say anything right now, Ruby. Just pause. More time will give you better perspective.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turns out to be the best advice I receive. I am newly sober and still inside the wreckage\u2014unable to make sense of anything, let alone speak clearly about it. So I stay silent.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, Rippey and Newsom are both happily remarried and no longer pinned down by addiction.<\/p>\n
But even though most of the events described in Rippey\u2019s article took place more than 20 years ago, Newsom would probably prefer that that chapter of his life remain in the distant past.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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