Gavin Newsom

Gavin Christopher Newsom born October 10, 1967 in San Francisco, California, to Tessa Thomas (née Menzies) and William Alfred Newsom III, a state appeals court judge and attorney for Getty Oil. He is a fourth-generation San Franciscan. One of Newsom's maternal great-grandfathers, Scotsman Thomas Addis, was a pioneer scientist in the field of nephrology and a professor of medicine at Stanford University. Newsom is the second cousin, twice removed, of musician Joanna Newsom. Newsom's aunt was married to Ron Pelosi, the brother-in-law of then Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

Newsom's parents divorced in 1972 when he was a boy.

Newsom joined Long Beach City College Superintendent Eloy Oakley in a November 2015 op-ed calling for the creation of the California College Promise, which would create partnerships between public schools, public universities, and employers and offer a free community college education. Throughout 2016, he joined Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf at the launch of the Oakland Promise and Second Lady Jill Biden and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti at the launch of the LA Promise. In June 2016, Newsom helped secure $15 million in the state budget to support the creation of promise programs throughout the state.

In December 2015, Newsom called on the University of California to reclassify computer science courses as a core academic class to incentivize more high schools to offer computer science curriculum. He sponsored successful legislation signed by Governor Brown in September 2016, that began the planning process for expanding computer science education to all state students, beginning as early as kindergarten.

In 2016, Newsom passed a series of reforms at the University of California to give student-athletes additional academic and injury-related support, and to ensure that contracts for athletic directors and coaches emphasized academic progress. This came in response to several athletics programs, including the University of California – Berkeley's football team, which had the lowest graduation rates in the country.

Newsom has said he did not have an easy childhood, partly due to dyslexia. He attended kindergarten and first grade at Ecole Notre Dame Des Victoires, a French-American bilingual school in San Francisco, but eventually transferred out, due to the severe dyslexia that still affects him. It has challenged his abilities to write, spell, read, and work with numbers. Throughout his schooling, Newsom had to rely on a combination of audiobooks, digests, and informal verbal instruction. To this day, he prefers to interpret documents and reports through audio.

Newsom attended third through fifth grades at Notre Dame des Victoires, where he was placed in remedial reading classes. In high school, he played basketball and baseball and graduated from Redwood High School in 1985. Newsom was a shooting guard in basketball and an outfielder in baseball. His skills placed him on the cover of the Marin Independent Journal.

Tessa Newsom worked three jobs to support Gavin and his sister Hilary Newsom Callan. In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, his sister recalled Christmases when their mother told them they would not receive any gifts. Tessa opened their home to foster children, instilling in Newsom the importance of public service. His father's finances were strapped in part because of his tendency to give away his earnings. Newsom worked several jobs in high school to help support his family.

Newsom attended Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship, graduating in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science with a major in political science. He was a left-handed pitcher for Santa Clara, but he threw his arm out after two years and has not thrown a baseball since. He lived in the Alameda Apartments, which he later compared to living in a hotel. He has reflected on his education fondly, crediting Santa Clara's Jesuit approach with helping him become an independent thinker who questions orthodoxy. While in school, Newsom spent a semester studying abroad in Rome, Italy.

Newsom was baptized and raised in his father's Catholic faith. He has described himself as an "Irish Catholic rebel...in some respects, but one that still has tremendous admiration for the Church and very strong faith". When asked about the state of the Catholic Church in 2008, he said it was in crisis. He said he stays with the Church because of his "strong connection to a greater purpose, and...higher being". Newsom identifies as a practicing Catholic, saying that he has a "strong sense of faith that is perennial, day in and day out". He is the godfather of designer and model Nats Getty.

In December 2001, Newsom married Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former San Francisco prosecutor and legal commentator for Court TV, CNN, and MSNBC. They married at Saint Ignatius Catholic Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco, where Guilfoyle had attended law school. The couple appeared in the September 2004 issue of Harper's Bazaar; the spread had them posed at the Getty Villa with the caption "the New Kennedys". They jointly filed for divorce in January 2005, citing "difficulties due to their careers on opposite coasts". Their divorce was finalized on February 28, 2006. Guilfoyle gained prominence in 2011 via a Fox News chat show. She was later named senior advisor to Republican President Donald Trump, whom Newsom has extensively criticized. Newsom later became an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church.

On January 31, 2007, Newsom's close friend, campaign manager, and former chief of staff Alex Tourk confronted Newsom after learning from his wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, that she and Newsom had an affair in 2005, when she was Newsom's appointments secretary. Tourk immediately resigned. Newsom admitted the affair the next day and apologized to the public, saying he was "deeply sorry" for his "personal lapse of judgment". In 2018, Rippey-Tourk said that she thought it wrong to associate Newsom's behavior with the #MeToo movement: "I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-yr old adult married woman & mother.... I do want to make sure that the #metoo movement is reserved for cases and situations that deserve it."

Newsom began dating film director Jennifer Siebel in September 2006. He announced he would seek treatment for alcohol use disorder in February 2007. The couple announced their engagement in December 2007, and they were married in Stevensville, Montana, in July 2008. They have four children.

Newsom and his family moved from San Francisco to a house they bought in Kentfield in Marin County in 2012.

After his election as governor, Newsom and his family moved into the California Governor's Mansion in Downtown Sacramento and thereafter settled in Fair Oaks. In May 2019, The Sacramento Bee reported that Newsom's $3.7 million purchase of a 12,000 square foot home in Fair Oaks was the most expensive private residence sold in the Sacramento region since the year began

In August 2021, Newsom sold a Marin County home for $5.9 million in an off-market transaction. He had originally put the property up for sale in early 2019 for $5.895 million, but removed the property from the market after a price reduction to $5.695 million.