Gavin Newsom's secret past he's so desperate to hide... and the damning evidence that proves who he really is
By Dana Kennedy
Daily Mail
Nov 6, 2025
Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) is facing criticism for seemingly trying to spin his gilded upbringing into a rags-to-riches tale during a recent interview
Call it Nob Hill-billy elegy.
Presumed 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, Democratic governor of California and a card-carrying member of the San Francisco elite, has been channeling the ghost of Horatio Alger in a much-mocked attempt to portray himself as someone who made it out of a tough childhood.
But Newsom, 58, famously grew up surrounded by the most powerful families in California who not only backed his early business ventures but greased the wheels of his political ascent, sources have told the Daily Mail.
Even his staunchest supporters admit that Newsom's early life was not exactly the stuff of deep struggle.
But that hasn't stopped Newsom from painting himself as a graduate of the school of hard knocks.
During his October 25 appearance on the All The Smoke podcast, hosted by former NBA champions Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Newsom described his upbringing as being 'about paying the bills, man… It was just, like, hustling.'
After his parents divorced in the early 1970s, he was raised by his hard-working single mother - first in a San Francisco home now worth about $3.6million and later in equally affluent Marin County. Newsom's mother, Tessa, worked three jobs to support her two children, and his father's highest salary throughout his career as a judge was $75,000, according to SFGate.
The paper described them as having 'enviable connections' but 'little money.'
Newsom (right) is the son of late California judge William Newsom (left) once a lawyer for the billionaire Getty oil family (the father and son are pictured in 2004)
'I was out there kind of raising myself…' he said on the podcast. 'I was sitting there with the Wonder Bread… macaroni and cheese.'
A number of longtime Newsom observers in California called his tale a farce, and said he and his allies have long pushed the story of his allegedly underprivileged childhood.
'He talks about his poor mother, working her fingers to the bone, as if he went barefoot to school,' Dan Walters, a columnist with CalMatters who has covered California politics for 50 years, told the Daily Mail.
'Yeah, barefoot to private school in Marin County.'
Kevin Dalton, a political activist and longtime critic of Newsom, claims the governor tailors his story to fit his audience.
'He's a chameleon and will bend and shapeshift and change colors, you know, whatever suits his current environment,' Dalton told the Daily Mail.
'You can hear it with his speech, you can hear it with his stories. He's never once talked about eating Wonder Bread and mac and cheese, but all of a sudden he's in a room with a bunch of ex-NBA ballers and this stuff starts coming up. It's perfect.'
Newsom's upbringing was complicated, but far from impoverished, according to most accounts of his life.
His parents divorced when he was young, and his father, William Newsom III, was a well-connected San Francisco lawyer who later became a judge - and then became the family lawyer for the Getty oil dynasty.
Pictured: The Democrat governor on an episode of the All The Smoke podcast last week, during which he claimed his family had to 'hustle' to make ends meet
His mother, who died of breast cancer in 2002 at age 55, did work multiple jobs when Newsom was a kid. But Walters said he still 'had an upper-class upbringing of a sort.'
'He wasn't a latchkey kid scrambling for food.'
Before Newsom's parents divorced in 1971, the family took in young Gordon Getty, son of oil tycoon J Paul Getty, and gave him what Walters called 'some family structure.'
The Gettys, one of America's richest dynasties, in turn helped provide Newsom with an entrée into San Francisco's upper crust and politics.
'The two families - the Newsoms and the Gettys - have been intertwined for decades,' Walters told the Daily Mail. He said there were two other powerful San Francisco families in the mix - the Pelosis and Browns (the latter being the family of Governor Edmund Gerald 'Pat' Brown).
The Newsom, Pelosi and Getty families are godparents to one another's children and make appearances at important family events, according to James Reginato's book, Growing up Getty.
Newsom's father's legal work for the Getty family brought them into the orbit of immense wealth - and even danger.
Back in the 1960s, J Paul Getty's grandson, John Paul Getty III, was kidnapped in Italy and had his ear cut off. The ransom was then delivered by Newsom's father, who was the young man's godfather.
Newsom (left) grew up around the wealthy and influential Getty family who was instrumental in launching his political career. He is pictured in June 2004 with Gordon Getty (center), the son of oil tycoon J Paul Getty, and former Governor Jerry Brown (right), during a Napa Valley Wine Auction event at the PlumpJack Winery in Oakville, California
The family fortune made by oil tycoon J Paul Getty is now shared among dozens of descendants
'He was sort of a legal gopher for the Gettys,' Walters said. But that Getty connection paid off in very big ways.
In the 1980s, while serving as an appellate court judge, Newsom's father helped push through a bill that changed California trust law, a move that gave Gordon Getty control of his billion-dollar inheritance.
'It was a huge deal,' Walters told the Daily Mail. 'We're talking about a billion-dollar gesture for his pals.'
Shortly afterward, Judge Newsom resigned and became trustee of the Gordon Getty Trust.
'He stayed on the bench long enough to help make the law that benefited Getty, and then went to work for him,' Walters said. 'And no one ever said a word.'
Mike Netter, co-chair of the Rebuild California movement and one of the leaders of the failed 2020 attempt to recall Newsom, has no patience with the governor's tales of alleged childhood poverty.
'Basically, Gavin Newsom was born into this tiny elite group of people who took power about 40 or 50 years ago and have been running the state of California ever since,' Netter told the Daily Mail.
Prior to running for public office, Newsom became a millionaire with his first venture, PlumpJack winery, which he started at age 24 with Billy Getty (pictured together with Peter Getty in 1992)
'San Francisco is like a city back East, the only one of its kind out here. These people - the Gettys, the Newsoms, the Pelosis, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown - grew up without any opposing views and took over California.
'The problem with Newsom is the same problem we see in the state. It's too much of a one-party, one viewpoint state.'
Netter also pointed out that Newsom became a millionaire with his first business venture, PlumpJack winery, which he started at age 24.
The website for the winery says it began as a 'humble wine store' in San Francisco, but it was, in fact, funded by Gordon Getty with his son Billy Getty as his partner.
The name came from an opera Gordon Getty wrote called Plump Jack, which comes from the nickname for Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's most famous comic characters.
By 2003, as Newsom prepared his run for San Francisco mayor, the PlumpJack group of businesses had turned him into a millionaire on paper - with holdings valued between $6million and $7million - and were generating hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, fueled in large part by Getty family investments.
But the Newsom family's political reach extended far beyond the Gettys.
Newsom's grandfather, William Newsom II, was close to Pat Brown, California's governor in the 1950s and '60s. Later on, Newsom's father was appointed to the appellate court by Pat's son, Governor Jerry Brown.
The famous Getty Villa in Malibu (pictured) served as the backdrop for a 2004 eight-page spread in Harper's Bazaar titled The New Kennedys, featuring Newsom and his then wife Kimberly Guilfoyle
Prior to running for public office, Newsom (center) became a millionaire with his first venture, PlumpJack winery, which he started at age 24 with Billy Getty (pictured together with Peter Getty (left) in 1992)
'These families... they've all been connected by politics, marriage and money,' Walters told the Daily Mail.
Walters credits Willie Brown (no relation to Pat or Jerry) with launching both Newsom's and Kamala Harris's political careers.
'Willie Brown was king of San Francisco,' Walters said. 'He could make or break anyone - and he made Gavin... without Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom wouldn't exist politically.'
In addition to the family tree of political entanglement, Newsom's personal life has fallen equally under a microscope.
'His father had a big drinking problem - a very big one - and so did Gavin later, which is why he quit drinking,' Walters told the Daily Mail. 'It's a family disease.'
In a 2007 interview with SFGate, Newsom said he 'didn't know' if he was an alcoholic or not, but said he was seeking treatment for alcohol.
He revealed that he had been attending nightly counseling sessions, which were helping him examine why he felt the need to 'drink to an extreme.'
'I don't need to drink now. I need more time to reflect,' he said at the time. 'I've got to be ready, focused and clear.'
However, in later interviews, he denied having gone into any formal treatment program.
He told the Sacramento Bee in 2018 that he had resumed drinking - reportedly a little bit of wine every now and then - after a period of abstinence.
'No, there's no rehab. I just stopped,' he said. 'There was no treatment, no nothing related to any of that stuff. I stopped because I thought it was a good thing to stop.'
Newsom's love life has also been a focal point for some.
During the same 2007 interview with SFGate, he publicly acknowledged - and apologized for - an affair he had with his appointment secretary Ruby Rippey‑Tourk in 2005.
While Newsom was in the process of divorcing first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, he became involved with Rippey‑Tourk, who was also the wife of his campaign manager. (Newsom was still legally married at the time, but was divorcing.)
In the interview, Newsom called it 'something I'll for the rest of my life regret.'
He married his first wife, attorney and legal commentator Guilfoyle, in 2001, and they divorced in 2005.
'They were a wonderful couple,' a prominent San Francisco socialite, who has known Newsom since he was a child, told the Daily Mail.
'It was just a matter of bad timing. Kimberly wanted a baby, and at that time, Gavin didn't. It was too soon.
Some critics have attributed Newsom's political success - particularly his mayoral campaign in 2003 - to his close ties to California politician and former mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown
Newsom married actress and documentary filmmaker Jennifer Lynn Siebel (left), in 2008. Together they have four children and split their time between a $9million mansion in Marin County and a $3million home in Sacramento
Newsom faced a gubernatorial recall in 2020 due to his oppressive COVID restrictions and a bumpy vaccine roll-out during the pandemic
Newsom faced a gubernatorial recall in 2020 due to his oppressive COVID restrictions and a bumpy vaccine roll-out during the pandemic
Newsom then married actress and documentary filmmaker Jennifer Lynn Siebel, in 2008.
Together they have four children, split their time between a $9million mansion in Marin County and a $3million home in Sacramento, and look like the picture-perfect family. But Siebel comes with her own considerable baggage.
In 1981, when Siebel, then six years old, was with her family in Hawaii, she and her older sister were playing with golf carts. Siebel accidentally backed her cart into her sister who had been hiding behind it, killing her.
Siebel said she has been plagued with survivor's guilt ever since.
'I felt the pressure to be perfect,' she told Entertainment Tonight, 'to make my parents forget, by being two daughters instead of one.'
Siebel also publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of rape and sexual assault, and was one of the women who testified against him in his 2022 Los Angeles criminal trial.
She said she first met Weinstein in 2005 when she was an aspiring actress and filmmaker, and later agreed to meet him in a Beverly Hills hotel room where she said he raped her.
In recent months, Siebel, who runs the nonprofit Representation Project, which bills itself as 'the leading gender watchdog organization,' as well as other companies, has come under fire for raking in thousands of dollars in donations from corporations that lobby the state of California.
In light of all this, Newsom's critics find his recent remarks about his hardscrabble life difficult to stomach.
'Politicians love the humble pie routine - to say they came up from nothing. But Gavin Newsom? He's as connected as they come,' Netter told the daily mail.
Dalton finds Newsom's Proust-like memory of his mac-and-cheese days to be 'pure comedy.'
'It was exactly like Hillary Clinton pulling out the bottle of hot sauce from her purse. It's all wildly convenient and contrived - but the scariest part is it's wildly effective.
'You know, I can say, the guy's a sociopath, but then everyone on the left is like, 'Yeah, but he's got great hair,' right? So it's hard to combat.'
Activist Denise Aguilar of the Freedom Angels group in California that fought vaccine laws and also worked for the 2020 recall of Newsom told the Daily Mail that Newsom is not fit to be president because she believes he is out of touch with the common man he describes himself as being.
'Newsom is out there on podcasts in his bid to be president and talking about growing up hustling and eating Wonder Bread, yet his actions as governor have forced Californians to hustle to put food on the table and pay the bills,' Aguilar said.
'I find it interesting that Gavin Newsom says he understands the struggle to make ends meet, yet it's his policies that are directly responsible for skyrocketing the cost of living that has Californians struggling every day to pay for food, gas, utilities, insurance and housing.
'Most people in California would tell you not to ever let Newsom California the nation.'
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