It’s a story as slick as the gov’s hairdo.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has been spinning sob stories about growing up penniless during a strife-filled childhood – but critics are ragging on those rags-to-riches claims.
The multimillionaire Democrat’s tall tales are being echoed in a series of gushing profiles, part of a media blitz ahead for his forthcoming memoir “Young Man in a Hurry,” in which the likely 2028 presidential hopeful outlines his struggles with dyslexia, a dysfunctional family and bullying from his school classmates.
Gavin Newsom, center, with Peter and Billy Getty during the PlumpJack wine shop opening party in 1992. Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
The memoir, set to drop Feb. 24, paints a portrait of young Newsom so tight on cash he has to pick up a newspaper delivery route and sweat out shifts as a busboy to chip in as his recently divorced mother “scrambled to keep the family afloat,” a new Vogue profile declared.
But critics like Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton said they were tired of the claims of penny-pinching upbringing.
“What a joke this whole act is,” said Hilton, who’s running for the nomination to replace the term-limited Newsom. “There’s no better example of elitist privilege than Gavin Newsom. Look at his family and his connections, going back generations. In any other country you’d call it aristocracy.”
Hilton said Newsom’s grandfather helped elect former Gov. Pat Brown and “the Newsom and Brown families have been trading political favors and lucrative business deals ever since.” Rep. Nancy Pelosi was tied to the Newsoms when Gavin Newsom’s aunt married into the two-time House Speaker’s family, Hilton noted.
The wildest revelations from Gavin Newsom’s memoir
“Well we’re all sick of it – and we’re going to kick this smug, entitled ruling class out this year as we end 16 years of Democrat one party rule,” Hilton said.
Newsom’s influential dad worked as an attorney for billionaire Gordon Getty, whose deep-pocketed family took the future governor and his sister exotic trips including an African safari and a visit to Spain’s royals. But that globe-trotting created a “split personality” of his life, he writes in the memoir, according to Vogue.
“Our mother didn’t know what to do with the memories we carted home from our Getty trips… It was almost as if we were strangers to her,” Newsom writes in a brief excerpt quoted by the magazine. “For a day or two, she’d give us the silent treatment, and then we’d fall back into the form of a life trying to make ends meet.”
The Vogue profile, which starts by calling him “embarrassingly handsome,” dismisses people who believe Newsom comes from money.
Young Newsom wearing the school uniform of École Notre Dame Des Victoires, a private school in San Francisco. Newsom family
“He doesn’t. Access, yes. Privilege, yes. Money, no,” the profile states. “After his parents’ divorce, his father seems not to have provided much financial support… They took in foster kids because the government stipend helped pay the rent.”
The New York Times, meanwhile, outlined Newsom growing up in a politically connected family, with his father William A. Newsom III appointed as a California appellate judge.
He started a wine store business helped by “those ties” and eventually amassed a “collection of wineries,” the Times said – though it proclaimed in the same story that “the privileged caricature of his background is mistaken.”
The Democrat’s memoir also offers the origin story behind his slick hair and tailored suits, saying he adopted the look of Pierce Brosnan on TV’s “Remington Steele” in response to bullies at Redwood High School who called him “Newscum” stemming from his issues with dyslexia.
Then-San Francisco Mayor Newsom with Gordon Getty, center, and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, right, enjoy a pre-dinner drink during a hospitality event of the Napa Valley Wine Auction in Oakville, Calif., 2004. AP
And the much-hyped tome will also dive into his complex relationship with the former high school athlete with his mom, Tessa Thomas Menzies, who left him with lasting mental scars for telling him it was “OK to be average” while he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, according to Politico.
One thing that apparently won’t be covered in the book by the governor and former San Francisco mayor who was nicknamed “Mayor McHottie” in local media is his headline-grabbing fling with model and college lacrosse star Ruby Rippey-Tourk – who was only 19 when she linked up with Newsom, who was then 38. Newsom defended the omission to the Times, saying the pair “only went on a few dates.”
But regular folks remain most fixated on the oft-repeated refrain by Newsom of humble beginnings.
Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
“He was the son of a judge, he wasn’t poor,” said one Facebook user of Newsom, who had college letters of recommendation from former San Fran Mayor Willie Brown.
“POOR LIL’ GAVIN,” one X user wrote of Newsom, who had posed for a San Francisco Chronicle feature called “Children of the Rich” before he ever entered politics. “Everybody feels sorry for Gavin Newsom. He’s had a tough life.”
“So lunch at French Laundry?” they added, referencing the pricey three-Michelin-star Napa Valley restaurant where Newsom faced criticism for dining during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown.
Hilton, the GOP candidate, accused Newsom of using his family’s political connections and ties to the Gettys of helping to launch his business and political career. He called the Newsom-Getty-Pelosi-Brown families “an elitist cabal.”
“It’s all so revoltingly incestuous and elitist,” Hilton said. “And it explains why, as governor, Gavin Newsom presides over a California economy where the rich get richer but regular working people get screwed.”
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