A former aide to Gavin Newsom has publicly shared for the first time her full account of their affair, which took place more than two decades ago when Newsom was mayor of San Francisco.

In a new essay published in Vanity Fair on Tuesday, Ruby Rippey writes about her struggles with alcoholism, substance abuse and her relationship with Newsom while she worked as his appointments secretary and was married to his deputy chief of staff and later the manager of the mayor’s re-election campaign.

The essay provides the most detailed look yet at Rippey’s relationship with Newsom, now in the final year of his second term as governor of California – and is likely to rekindle interest in the scandal ahead of his widely expected run for the White House in 2028. In the essay, Rippey does not refer to Newsom by name, but as her “boss” and the “mayor”.

“For my former boss, it is a footnote in a longer arc of ascent,” Rippey writes in the Vanity Fair essay, titled How I Blew Up – Then Rebuilt – My Life. “For me, it is the fracture that split my life into before and after.”

Newsom, who was single at the time, publicly admitted to the relationship in 2007, memorably telling reporters at a city hall press conference: “Everything you’ve heard and read is true.” In his new memoir, Newsom describes their relationship as “the briefest of affairs”. But Rippey’s telling complicates his account of their story.

Newsom writes in his new book that he “came clean” to her husband and his top aide Alex Tourk – a version Rippey says gives Newsom “credit for something I had already done”.

“Technically defensible, perhaps, but one that leaves the unmistakable impression that he, not I, was the one who told Alex the truth,” she writes.

In the essay, Rippey describes the early days of the newly elected mayor’s administration, her marriage, pregnancy, struggles with alcohol and her ensuing relationship with Newsom as it veered into an extramarital affair.

She eventually went to rehab and left her job with the mayor’s office.

After the story became public, Rippey was inundated with calls from journalists and was the subject of frenzied media coverage about the affair.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the first partner of California who started dating Newsom shortly afterward, told journalists in 2007 that Rippey was the “culprit”– remarks she later apologized for.

The office of the governor and a spokesperson for Siebel Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the aftermath of the incident, Kamala Harris, then the district attorney, contacted Rippey, she writes. Rippey was being urged to speak publicly about the incident, she told Harris, who advised her to pause and that taking time would give her “better perspective”.

“It turns out to be the best advice I receive. I am newly sober and still inside the wreckage – unable to make sense of anything, let alone speak clearly about it,” Rippey writes.

Rippey and her husband eventually divorced.

For years, Rippey said little publicly about her relationship with Newsom. During the MeToo movement, she observed a new narrative about their relationship emerge in which Rippey saw herself cast as a “powerless subordinate”, she writes.

At the time, Rippey said she was doubtful it applied to her situation. Although she was Newsom’s “subordinate”, she said in 2018, she was also “a free-thinking, 33-year-old, adult married woman and mother. Also happened to have an unfortunate inclination toward drinking-to-excess and self-destruction.”

Taking responsibility felt like the last form of agency, Rippey writes in the essay. But since the reckoning, she has re-evaluated the role power can play in a relationship between a subordinate and their boss.

“Both things are true,” she writes. “I am responsible for what I did. Power does not distribute consequences evenly.”

Rippey is now 20 years sober, she writes, and has remarried and rebuilt her relationship with her ex-husband.