HARROWING In 1973, John Paul Getty III, the grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped by Italian gangsters and held for a $17 million ransom. The elder Getty balked at paying the ransom, but only relented when the heir’s ear was cut off and sent to a newspaper. Gavin Newsom’s father, a trusted insider of the Getty family, delivered the ransom. Later, Gavin Newsom opened a wine business with an investment from Gordon Getty, the kidnapped boy’s uncle.
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and Golden Gate Park were overrun by 100,000 hippies and counterculture icons dropping acid and seeking to, as Timothy Leary urged, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” A modern Democrat
candidate for president couldn’t have a purer genesis than being conceived on the eve of the Summer of Love’s spiritual awakening, anti- war sentiment, and endless “free” love. Gavin’s father, William
Newsom Jr., was 32 when he married his mother, Tessa, 19, in September 1966. And, while after their di-
vorce in the early 1970s, Tes- sa would have to work several jobs, Tessa’s own upbringing was far from humble. Tessa’s mother worked as
an actress in the San Fran- cisco Actor’s Workshop, and her father was the assistant curator at the 55-acre city- owned Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park (now known as the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Stry- bing Arboretum). Tessa’s grandfather was Thomas Addis, a profes-
48 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2025
sor of medicine at Stanford University who was well known for his research on kidney disease. Gavin’s father — Bill, as
he was known to his friends and associates — equipped California’s future governor with matchless connections through marriage and busi- ness to a dynastic tangle of powerful San Francisco politicians and kingmak- ers: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; father and son Pat and Jerry Brown, who both served as governor; and the Getty family, descended from J. Paul Getty, once the wealthiest man in America. Gavin Newsom’s pater-
nal grandfather, William Newsom Sr., was born in San Francisco in 1902. Before Pat Brown became California’s two-term governor, before Brown was California attor- ney general, he was the dis- trict attorney for San Fran-
cisco. Newsom Sr. helped elect him to office as his cam- paign manager. Pat Brown’s son, Jerry,
later served four nonconsec- utive terms as California’s governor while his daugh- ter, Kathleen, served as state treasurer for four years and ran for governor herself in 1994, only to be defeated by Republican Pete Wilson. Gavin’s aunt married
Ron Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law, but they later divorced. But the most important connection for Newsom has been his link to the rari- fied world of billionaires via the Getty family of Getty Oil fortune. Newsom’s dad roomed
with Gordon Getty, son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, at St. Ignatius College Pre- paratory in San Francisco. Gordon would go on to be- come a composer and was
In 1975, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Bill Newsom a state judge and later to the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco, a post he held until his retirement in 1995.
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