From the Los Angeles Times, Sept. 7, 2018:
Gavin Newsom wasn’t born rich, but he was born connected — and those alliances have paid handsome dividends throughout his career.
A coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families has backed him at every step of his political rise, which in November could lead next to his election as governor of California.
San Francisco society’s “first families” — whose names grace museum galleries, charity ball invitations and hospital wards — settled on Newsom, 50, as their favored candidate two decades ago, said Willie Brown, former state Assembly speaker and former mayor of the city.
“He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” said Brown, who is a mentor to Newsom. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”
A Times review of campaign finance records identified eight of San Francisco’s best-known families as being among Newsom’s most loyal and long-term contributors. Among those patrons are the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, whose families made their respective fortunes in oil, hotels and fashion. They first backed him when he was a restaurateur and winery owner running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998, and have continued their support through the governor’s race.
They are not Newsom’s largest donors: The families in total have given about $2 million of the $61 million that donors have contributed to his campaigns and independent committees backing those bids. But they gave while he was a relative unknown, providing crucial support to a political newcomer in the years before his campaign accounts piled high with cash from labor unions, Hollywood honchos, tech billionaires and donors up and down the state....*****.... Now the families appear poised to see their investments pay off.These donors are mostly liberal, inspired by Newsom’s history as an early supporter of progressive causes, including same-sex marriage as San Francisco mayor in 2004. But some are Republicans, including President Trump’s new ambassador to Austria, who are drawn by Newsom’s background as a small businessman.
The front-runner’s opponents have attacked him for his connections. During the primary, two of his Democratic rivals, Antonio Villaraigosa and John Chiang, painted Newsom as the beneficiary of wealth and privilege. John Cox, his GOP opponent in the November election, reiterated the theme in a new website titled “Fortunate $on.” And an independent expenditure committee supporting the Republican spent a quarter-million dollars late last month on an ad calling Newsom “a child of privilege, his path greased by family and political connections and billionaire patrons.”
Newsom, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this article, has long been tied to San Francisco society.
His father, Bill, was a lifelong friend of Gordon Getty, the son of oil magnate J. Paul Getty — they attended high school together. Bill Newsom later managed the Getty family trust on behalf of Gordon, estimated by Forbes to be worth more than $2 billion in 2018. Bill Newsom was so close with the family that he helped deliver the ransom money after the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty’s grandson, John Paul Getty III....*****.... During Gov. Jerry Brown’s first tenure, he appointed Bill Newsom a judge, and the Newsom family had close ties to Willie Brown, former state lawmaker and California Democratic Party leader John Burton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.The Gettys’ support has played an important role in Gavin Newsom’s personal, professional and political life.
He has said he was primarily raised by his mother, who at times struggled to make ends meet. But Gordon and Ann Getty viewed him as a son, according to interviews the couple gave to the San Francisco Chronicle and W Magazine, and they provided him with experiences his parents could not afford, including an African safari when he was a teen, Newsom said in an earlier interview with The Times.
“It all goes back to the Gettys as far as Gavin is concerned,” said Jerry Roberts, former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and an expert on Bay Area politics.
In addition to helping fund Newsom’s early business ventures, the family has been a mainstay as he pursued his political ambitions. Eighteen Gettys — including Gordon, Ann and actor Balthazar Getty — have collectively donated more than a half-million dollars to Newsom’s nine campaigns, starting with a total of $750 to his 1998 campaign for supervisor. Members of the family have spent more than $362,000 supporting his current gubernatorial bid.
A spokesman for the Gettys did not respond to a request for comment.
Through his friendship and business partnership with Gordon and Ann Getty’s son Billy, Newsom was at the center of the social scene led by the younger generation of San Francisco’s wealthy families. Those relationships would form the foundation of his life in politics.
“These kids had all grown up together, or played sports or gone to school together or later dated,” said Catherine Bigelow, a longtime San Francisco society writer. “In the early ’90s [they] didn’t want to go to the parties their parents were going to. Billy and Gavin opened a wine shop and restaurant when they took over the Balboa Café, creating this really cool scene.”
This was San Francisco before the tech boom and before social media. The Balboa Café, a Marina standard that Billy Getty and Newsom bought and updated, was described by the New York Times in 1998 as “a glittering nexus for Gen-X San Franciscans with social and political connections.”
That year, Newsom ran his first campaign: a bid to hold on to a county supervisor seat, which then-Mayor Willie Brown had appointed him to fill. At the time, the Chronicle wrote that Brown valued Newsom’s “easy familiarity with San Francisco’s upper crust.”
One check in 1998 came from Doris Fisher, the billionaire clothier who decades earlier founded the Gap in San Francisco with her husband. It was for $500, the most an individual could give, according to city law. An attempt to reach Doris Fisher through the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund was unsuccessful....
....MUCH MORE
