Gavin Newsom

Gavin Christopher Newsom was born in San Francisco, California, on October 10, 1967, to William Alfred Newsom IIIWilliam Newsom IIIWilliam Alfred Newsom III (1934–2018) was a California lawyer and judge who served on the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, and was a longtime legal and business adviser to the Getty family; he was godfather to John Paul Getty III, helped deliver the ransom in the 1973 kidnapping, and was the father of California Governor Gavin Newsom.Open the full entry, later a California Court of Appeal justice, and Tessa Thomas Menzies; he has a younger sister, Hilary. His parents separated when he was two and divorced three years later; as a child he spent occasional weekends and summers with his father.⁠[1][2][3][4]

In his memoir he describes his upbringing as “sometimes turbulent”: the family moved many times and his mother worked multiple jobs; he struggled in school as a child and was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia.⁠[4]

He attended Redwood High School and then entered Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship, graduating in 1989 with a degree in political science.⁠[5][1][6]

After brief stints in sales and real estate, he opened the PlumpJack Wines retail shop on Fillmore Street in San Francisco in 1992. It grew into the PlumpJack Group, which includes restaurants, resorts and wineries, among them the PlumpJack Inn in Olympic Valley and the CADE and Odette wineries.⁠[1][7][5]

In 1996 San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown appointed him to the Parking and Traffic Commission; in 1997 he was appointed to fill a vacant seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and he then won election to the board in 1998 and was re-elected.⁠[6][1]

In December 2003 he defeated Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez in a runoff to be elected mayor of San Francisco, becoming the city’s youngest elected mayor in a century, and he took office in January 2004.⁠[6][5]

On February 12, 2004, he declared that same-sex couples could marry at San Francisco City Hall and directed the city-county clerk to issue marriage licenses to them, challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Ten years later he recalled that 4,036 couples from 46 states and several other nations came to marry.⁠[8][1]

On July 26, 2008, he married actress and film director Jennifer Siebel in Stevensville, Montana. Jennifer Siebel Newsom made the documentary Miss Representation and is California’s “First Partner”; the couple have four children.⁠[9][5]

He was elected lieutenant governor of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. On January 10, 2011, he was sworn in by his father in the state Senate chamber, pledging to bring “more of California’s entrepreneurial spirit to the state Capitol.” He left the San Francisco mayoralty after seven years; he had delayed his swearing-in by a week so that the outgoing, progressive-dominated Board of Supervisors could not appoint an interim mayor he opposed, and the board ultimately chose City Administrator Ed Lee, whom he supported.⁠[1][10]

While lieutenant governor, he co-authored the book Citizenville.⁠[1]

On November 6, 2018, he was elected California’s 40th governor with 7,721,410 votes (61.9%), against 4,742,825 votes (38.1%) for Republican John H. Cox.⁠[5][11]

On January 7, 2019, aged 51, he was sworn in by California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, succeeding Jerry Brown as governor. In his inaugural address he told rural voters: “I see you. I care about you. And I will represent you with pride.” He named homelessness, inequality and failing schools as “moral imperatives,” and set out priorities including expanding early childhood education, reducing community college costs and extending family leave.⁠[12]

On March 13, 2019, he signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions for the 737 people then on California’s death row, withdrawing the state’s lethal injection protocols and immediately closing the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison; the order released no one and changed no conviction or sentence. He said: “The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as Governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”⁠[13]

On March 19, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he issued Executive Order N-33-20, a statewide stay-at-home order intended to protect the health and well-being of all Californians.⁠[14]

On November 6, 2020, he attended a 50th birthday dinner for political adviser Jason Kinney at the high-end French Laundry restaurant in wine country north of San Francisco. He later apologized for attending the gathering during the pandemic, saying: “I made a bad mistake.”⁠[15]

On September 14, 2021, California held a special election on whether to recall him. The recall was rejected by 7,944,092 votes (61.9%) to 4,894,473 (38.1%), and he remained in office; among replacement candidates, Republican Larry A. Elder led with 48.4%.⁠[16]

In the November 8, 2022, general election he was re-elected with 6,470,104 votes (59.2%), defeating Republican Brian Dahle, who received 4,462,914 votes (40.8%).⁠[17]

On January 7, 2025, he proclaimed a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to the Palisades Fire and windstorm conditions.⁠[18]

On the evening of June 7, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum under 10 U.S.C. § 12406 calling 2,000 California National Guard personnel into federal service for 60 days. On June 9, Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing that the statute requires the governor’s consent and that the order infringed on his role as commander-in-chief of the California National Guard. Newsom said: “It is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism. We will not let this stand.”⁠[19]

On June 19, 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously blocked U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer’s order returning control of the Guard to the governor, finding it “likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority.” Newsom responded that he would keep fighting.⁠[20]

On August 21, 2025, he signed the “Election Rigging Response Act” package, consisting of ACA 8, SB 280 and AB 604, which put a temporary new congressional map to voters in a November 4, 2025, special election, presenting it as a response to congressional redistricting in Texas. In that special election, Proposition 50, “Congressional Redistricting,” passed by 7,453,339 votes (64.4%) to 4,116,998 (35.6%).⁠[21][22]

On September 29, 2025, he signed SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, authored by State Senator Scott Wiener. The law requires large frontier AI developers to publish a safety framework on their websites, creates a mechanism for reporting critical safety incidents to the state Office of Emergency Services, protects whistleblowers and establishes the CalCompute consortium to develop a framework for a public computing cluster. He said: “California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities.”⁠[23]

In October 2025, asked whether he would seriously consider a White House bid after the midterm elections, he answered: “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise.” Asked whether he would decide to run, he said: “I have no idea.” His term as governor ends in January 2027, and he is barred by term limits from running again.⁠[24]

On January 8, 2026, he delivered his final State of the State address to lawmakers in Sacramento, his first in person since 2022. He urged the president to act on nearly $34 billion in requested wildfire recovery aid for Los Angeles: “It’s time for the president of the United States to do his job.” He also referred to his dyslexia: “It’s always been something that I have to work through.”⁠[25]

In February 2026 his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, was published. In it he recounts how his mother, Tessa Menzies Newsom, died at 55 after breast cancer while planning her own assisted suicide, and describes his four-year marriage to his first wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, which was mostly spent apart and ended in an amicable divorce.⁠[4]

The book also revisits his brief affair, while mayor of San Francisco, with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the wife of his then deputy chief of staff Alex Tourk; after it came to light he publicly apologized, and in the book he calls it “the worst betrayal of my life.”⁠[4]

On June 29, 2026, he signed the 2026–27 state budget, which his office described as balanced, with no projected deficit this fiscal year or next, and as preserving nearly $30 billion in reserves. In a video message he said: “balancing the budget and doing big things take the exact same skill.”⁠[26]

In September 2026, asked about the presidential race while fly fishing with Jake Tapper in a Montana river, he said of former Vice President Kamala Harris: “I wouldn’t run if she ran.”⁠[27]

As of October 2026, Newsom remained governor of California. Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton were contesting the November 3, 2026, election to succeed him. On October 23 he visited San Quentin Rehabilitation Center for the third annual San Quentin Film Festival, saying: “Public safety means bringing crime down, holding people accountable.”⁠[28][29]

Office of the Governor of California: Official website: https://www.gov.ca.gov/ (opens in a new window)⁠[30]

PlumpJack Group: Official website: https://plumpjack.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/cagovernor (opens in a new window)⁠[30]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/cagovernor (opens in a new window)⁠[30]