"Gavin Newsom's political story has always been a study in contrasts: a young entrepreneur whose first big break came from a billionaire family friend, and a boy raised by a single mother juggling three jobs to keep the lights on. That tension now echoes in California's bitter fight over a proposed wealth tax on billionaires' assets, a debate that hits close to home for a governor who sits squarely between privilege and precarity."
"In the early 1990s, Newsom's career began not at a campaign office, but in a wine shop on San Francisco's Fillmore Street called PlumpJack, a venture he launched with backing from the Getty fortune. Oil heir and composer Gordon Getty, a close family friend who once said he treated Newsom like a son-just as he had been treated similarly by Newsom's father. In fact, to call Newsom's father, William Alfred Newsom III, a lawyer for the Getty family would be an understatement."
Gavin Newsom's background combines substantial billionaire support and a working-class upbringing. In the early 1990s he launched PlumpJack on San Francisco's Fillmore Street with backing from the Getty fortune. Gordon Getty and other Getty family members invested in his early wineries, restaurants, and hotels, helping make him a multimillionaire before he became governor. Gettys and other wealthy allies later became major political donors to his campaigns. Newsom's father maintained deep ties to the Gettys and local political families, including an episode involving a $3 million delivery to kidnappers in 1973. Newsom opposes the proposed billionaire wealth tax, calling it bad economics and vowing to defeat it.
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