According to a new piece in Vanity Fair, this advice came straight from Harris herself. The woman involved is Ruby Rippey. She was having an affair with then-mayor Gavin Newsom. The scandal nearly ended Newsom’s career before it really started.
Rippey was broke and unemployed at the time. She even had a book offer on the table. But Harris stepped in. Per reports, Harris called her directly. She told Rippey to keep her mouth shut. “I wouldn’t say anything right now, Ruby,” Harris allegedly told her. That single sentence stopped a story that could have gone very differently.
Harris didn’t just tell her to wait. She told her to pause for a long time. “Just pause. More time will give you better perspective,” Harris allegedly told her. Rippey says she took that advice to heart.
According to her, this proved to be the ‘finest guidance I ever got.’ That silence lasted nearly two decades. Rippey stayed quiet until now. The scandal finally broke in 2007.
It shook the political world in San Francisco. Rippey was married to Newsom’s close friend and top aide. The affair involved heavy drinking and drugs. Rippey admits Newsom was “drinking too much and so was I.” She even woke up one morning with her dress soaked because she had wet the bed. The details are messy and embarrassing. But the timing of her silence is the real shock.
Newsom tried to minimize the whole thing in his new memoir. He called it “the stupidest and also briefest of affairs.” His office says he has “nothing further to add.” But Rippey says that isn’t the whole truth.
She feels like someone wrote her off without letting her speak. “When I read the pages a few days later, a familiar feeling returns,” she wrote. She says he assumes she won’t answer.
The public reaction was harsh back then. Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who was his girlfriend at the time, was very vocal. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she remarked, “I ought not mention this, yet…should anyone investigate the scandal…that woman is the one responsible.
She called Rippey “bad news” and said she was passed out on his doorstep. It was a brutal fight between women while the man kept his job.
So what does this mean for us today? We see a pattern where powerful people protect their own. Harris gave a young woman a choice: speak now and lose everything, or wait and survive. She chose to wait. Now the story is out, but the damage is done. It makes you wonder who else is staying quiet right now.
