![\"Mayor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771154588_378_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nSACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Gavin Newsom writes in his upcoming memoir about San Francisco\u2019s highborn Getty family fitting him in Brioni suits \u201cappropriate to meet a king\u201d when he was 20 years old. Then he flew aboard their private \u201cJetty\u201d to Spain for a royal princess\u2019s debutante-style party.<\/p>\n
Back home, real life wasn\u2019t as grand. <\/p>\n
In an annual performance for their single mom, Newsom and his sister would pretend to find problems with the fancy clothes his dad\u2019s friends, the heirs of ruthless oil baron J. Paul Getty, sent for Christmas. Poor fit. Wrong color. Not my style. The ritual gave her an excuse to return the gifts and use the store credit on presents for her children she placed under the tree. <\/p>\n
California\u2019s 41st governor, a possible suitor for the White House, opens up about the duality of his upbringing in his new book. Newsom details the everyday struggle living with his mom after his parents divorced and occasional interludes into his father\u2019s life charmed by the Gettys\u2019 affluence, including that day when the Gettys outfitted him in designer clothes at a luxury department store. <\/p>\n
\u201cI walked out understanding that this was the split personality of my life,\u201d Newsom writes in \u201cYoung Man in a Hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Newsom asserted that his \u201cone-dimensional\u201d public image as a slick, privileged politician on a path to power paved with Getty oil money fails to tell the whole story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to be something I\u2019m not,\u201d Newsom said in a recent interview. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to talk about, you know, \u2018I was born in a town called Hope with no running water.\u2019 That\u2019s not what this book is about. But it\u2019s a very different portrayal than the one I think 9 out of 10 people believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he explores a 2028 presidential run and basks in the limelight as one of President Trump\u2019s most vociferous critics, the book offers the Democratic politician a chance to write his own narrative and address the skeletons in his closet before opponents begin to exploit his past.<\/p>\n
A book tour, which is set to begin Feb. 21 in Nashville, also gives Newsom a reason to travel the country, meet voters and promote his life story without officially entering the race. He\u2019s expected to make additional stops in Georgia, South Carolina, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
The governor describes the book as a \u201cmemoir of discovery\u201d that sent him interviewing family members and friends and digging through troves of old documents about his lineage that his mother never spoke about and his father smoothed over. Learning about his family history, the good and the bad, Newsom said, helped him understand and accept himself. Mark Arax, an author and former Los Angeles Times journalist, was his ghostwriter. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve changed the opinion of myself,\u201d Newsom said when asked if he believed the book would revise his glossy public image. \u201cIt kind of rocked so many parts of my life, and kind of cracked things open. And I started to understand where my anxieties come from and why I\u2019m overcompensating in certain areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsom writes that his interest in politics brought him and his father, William, closer. His mother, Tessa, on the other hand, didn\u2019t share his father\u2019s enthusiasm. <\/p>\n
She warned him to get out while he still could, worried her only son would eschew his true self. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother did not want that world for me: the shrewd marriage of tall husbands and tall wives that kept each year\u2019s Cotillion Debutante Ball stocked with children of the same; the gritted teeth behind the social smiles; the spectator sport of who was in and who was out based on so-and-so\u2019s dinner party guest list,\u201d Newsom wrote. <\/p>\n
At the heart of her concern was her belief that Newsom\u2019s \u201cobsessive drive\u201d into business and politics was in response to his upbringing and an effort to solve \u201cthe riddle\u201d of his identity from his learning disorder, dyslexia, and the two different worlds he inhabited. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs I grew up trying to grasp which of these worlds, if either, suited me best, she had worried about the persona I was constructing to cover up what she considered a crack at my core,\u201d Newsom writes. \u201cIf my remaking was skim plaster, she feared, it would crumble. It would not hold me into adulthood.\u201d <\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s mother was 19 years old when she married his father, then 32. He learned through writing the book that his mother hailed from a \u201cfamily of brilliant and daring misfits who had carved new paths in botany and medicine and left-wing politics,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n
There was also secret pain and struggles with mental health. His maternal grandfather, a World War II POW, turned to the bottle after returning home. One night he told his three young daughters to line up in front of the fireplace so he could shoot them, but stopped when his wife walked in the door and took the gun from his hand. He committed suicide years later.<\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s father\u2019s family was full of more traditional Democrats and Irish Catholic storytellers who worked in banking, homebuilding, law enforcement and law. Newsom describes his paternal grandfather as one of the \u201cthinkers behind the throne\u201d for former California Gov. Edmund \u201cPat\u201d Brown, but his family never held public office despite his dad\u2019s bids for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the California Legislature.<\/p>\n
The failed campaigns left his father in financial and emotional turmoil that crippled his marriage when Newsom was a small boy. A divorce set the stage for an unusual contrasting existence for the would-be governor, offering him brief exposures to the wealth and power of the Gettys through his dad. <\/p>\n
Newsom said he moved casually between the rich and poor neighborhoods of San Francisco as a boy. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonder how effortlessly I glided because the two realms of my life, the characters of my mother\u2019s world and the characters of my father\u2019s world, did not fit together in the least,\u201d Newsom writes. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mayor Gavin Newsom and his dad, Judge William Newsom, have lunch at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
(Christina Koci Hernandez \/ San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Though William Alfred Newsom III went on to become an appellate court justice, Newsom\u2019s father was best known for his role delivering ransom money to the kidnappers of J. Paul Getty\u2019s grandson. He served as an adviser to the family without pay and a paid administrator of the $4 billion family trust.<\/p>\n
The governor wrote in the book that the ties between the two families go back three generations. His father was close friends with Getty\u2019s sons John Paul Jr. and Gordon since childhood when they became like his sixth and seventh siblings at Newsom\u2019s grandparents\u2019 house. <\/p>\n
Gordon Getty in particular considered Newsom\u2019s father his \u201cbest-best friend.\u201d Newsom\u2019s dad helped connect the eccentric music composer \u201cto the outside world,\u201d the governor wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy father had this way of creating a safe space for Gordon to open up,\u201d Newsom writes. \u201cHe became Gordon\u2019s whisperer, his interpreter and translator, a bridge to their friends, a bridge to Gordon\u2019s own children.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771154588_651_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his sister, Hilary Newsom, in a promotional portrait for the Search for the Cause campaign, which raises funds for cancer research, on Nov. 21, 2025.<\/p>\n
(Caroline Schiff\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
His father\u2019s friendship with Gordon Getty exposed Newsom and his younger sister, Hillary, to a world far beyond their family\u2019s own means. Gordon\u2019s wife, Ann, and Newsom\u2019s father organized elaborate adventures for the Gettys\u2019 four sons and the Newsom children. <\/p>\n
Newsom describes fishing on the Rogue River and riding in a helicopter while studying polar bears on the shores of the Hudson Bay in Canada. He recalled donning tuxedos and carrying toy guns pretending to be James Bond on a European yacht vacation and soaring over the Serengeti in a hot air balloon during an East African safari. <\/p>\n
Throughout his travels, Newsom often blended in with the Gettys\u2019 brown-haired sons. He wrote that the actor Jack Nicholson once mistakenly called him one of the \u201cGetty boys\u201d at a party in a 16th-century palazzo in Venice where guests arrived via gondola. Newsom didn\u2019t correct him. <\/p>\n
\u201cHad I shared this encounter with my mother, she likely would have asked me if deception was something I practiced whenever I hobnobbed with the Gettys,\u201d Newsom said in the book. \u201cFact is, I was always aware of the line that separated us from the Gettys. Not because they went out of their way to make us aware of it but because we, as good Newsoms, paid constant mind to the distinction.\u201d <\/p>\n
Newsom wrote that his mother seemed to begrudge the excursions when her children returned home. She raised them in a much more ordinary existence. Newsom describes his father\u2019s presence as \u201cepisodic.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cFor a day or two, she\u2019d give us the silent treatment, and then we\u2019d all fall back into the form of a life trying to make ends meet,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAfter enough vacations came and went, a cone of silence took hold.\u201d <\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s mother worked as an assistant retail buyer, a bookkeeper, a waitress at a Mexican restaurant, a development director for a nonprofit and a real estate agent \u2014 holding as many as three jobs at once \u2014 to provide for her children. His mother\u2019s sister and brother-in-law helped care for them when they could, but he likened himself to a latchkey kid because of the amount of time he and his sister spent alone. <\/p>\n
They moved five times in 10 years in search of a \u201cbetter house in a better neighborhood\u201d with good schools, taking the family from San Francisco to the Marin County suburbs. Though his mother owned a home, she often rented out rooms to bring in extra money. <\/p>\n
Tired of his mother complaining about finances and his father not coming through, Newsom wrote that he took on a paper route.<\/p>\n
In the book, Newsom describes his struggles with dyslexia and how the learning disorder undercut his self-esteem when he was an emotionally vulnerable child. <\/p>\n
Eager to make himself something more than an awkward kid with sweaty palms and a bowl haircut who couldn\u2019t read, Newsom mimicked Remington Steele, the suave character on the popular 1980s detective show. He chugged down glassfuls of raw eggs like Sylvester Stallone in \u201cRocky\u201d and ran across town and back like a prizefighter in training. <\/p>\n
He found confidence in high school sports, but his struggle to find himself continued into young adulthood. Newsom wrote that he watched tapes of motivational guru Tony Robbins and heeded his advice to remake yourself in the image of someone you admire. For Newsom, that became Robbins himself. <\/p>\n
\u201cFind a person who embodies all of the outward traits of personality, bearing, charisma, language, and power lacking in yourself,\u201d Newsom described the philosophy in the book. \u201cStudy that person. Copy that person. The borrowed traits may fit awkwardly at first, but don\u2019t fret. You\u2019ll be surprised by how fast the pose becomes you, and you the pose.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father scoffed at the self-help gurus and nurtured his interest in business.<\/p>\n
More than a half-dozen friends and family members, including Gordon Getty, invested equal shares to help him launch a wine shop in San Francisco. Newsom named the business, which expanded to include restaurants, hotels and wineries, \u201cPlumpJack,\u201d the nickname of Shakespeare\u2019s fictional character Sir John Falstaff and the title of Gordon Getty\u2019s opera.<\/p>\n
\u201cGordon\u2019s really inspired me to be bolder and more audacious. He\u2019s inspired me to be more authentic,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cThe risks I take in business … just trying to march to the beat of a different drummer and to be a little bolder. That\u2019s my politics. But I also think he played a huge role in that, in terms of shaping me in that respect as well.\u201d <\/p>\n
Newsom described Gordon and Ann Getty as like family. The Gettys also became the biggest investors in his wineries and among his largest political donors. <\/p>\n
In an interview, Newsom said there are many days when he feels his mother \u201cabsolutely\u201d was right to worry about the facade of politics and the mold her son stuffed himself into.<\/p>\n
![\"Gavin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771154589_903_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Gavin Newsom heads for his home neighborhood on Nov. 3, 2003, to cast hisvote for San Francisco mayor.<\/p>\n
(Mike Kepka \/ San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
He described the day the recall against him qualified for the ballot amid the COVID-19 pandemic as humbling and humiliating, though it later failed by a wide margin. Still today, he said, there\u2019s a voice in his head constantly questioning why he\u2019s in politics, what he\u2019s exposing his wife and children to and doing with his life. <\/p>\n
By choosing a career as an elected official despite his mother\u2019s warnings, Newsom ultimately picked his father\u2019s world and accomplished his father\u2019s dream of taking office. But he said the book taught him that so much of his own more gutsy positions, such as his early support for gay marriage, and his hustle were from his mother. <\/p>\n
Newsom said he\u2019s accepted that he can\u2019t control which version of himself people choose to see. Writing the book felt cathartic, he said, and left him more comfortable taking off his mask.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt allowed me to understand better my motivations, my purpose, my meaning, my mission… who my mom and dad were and who I am as a consequence of them and what truly motivates me,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cThere\u2019s a freedom. There\u2019s a real freedom. And it\u2019s nice. It\u2019s just so much nicer than the plaster of the past.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Gavin Newsom writes in his upcoming memoir about San Francisco\u2019s highborn Getty family fitting him in Brioni suits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24264,7,9,8,6193,3409,9229,84952,6314,1576,457,84953,72708,1637,6316,101,8074,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-178983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-book","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-character","13":"tag-child","14":"tag-dad","15":"tag-family-history","16":"tag-father","17":"tag-friend","18":"tag-gavin-newsom","19":"tag-gettys","20":"tag-gordon","21":"tag-life","22":"tag-mother","23":"tag-san-francisco","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}