Gavin Newsom\u2019s political story has always been a study in contrasts: a young entrepreneur whose first big break came from a billionaire family friend, and a boy raised by a single mother juggling three jobs to keep the lights on. That tension now echoes in California\u2019s bitter fight over a proposed wealth tax on billionaires\u2019 assets, a debate that hits close to home for a governor who sits squarely between privilege and precarity.\u200b For now, in this instance, he thinks the billionaires tax is \u201cbad economics\u201d and has vowed to defeat it. A closer look at his career shows billionaires have always been central to his story.<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, Newsom\u2019s career began not at a campaign office, but in a wine shop on San Francisco\u2019s Fillmore Street called PlumpJack<\/a>, a venture he launched with backing from the Getty fortune<\/a>. Oil heir and composer Gordon Getty<\/a>, a close family friend who once said he treated Newsom like a son\u2014just as he had been treated similarly by Newsom\u2019s father. In fact, to call Newsom\u2019s father, William Alfred Newsom III<\/a>, a lawyer for the Getty family would be an understatement. The future judge once hand-delivered $3 million to the Italian kidnappers of Getty\u2019s grandson, in 1973, CalMatters<\/em> reported<\/a>, while noting deep ties also between the Newsom family and other San Francisco political royalty, the Browns and Pelosis.<\/p>\n That relationship went far beyond a single store. Getty invested in most of Newsom\u2019s early businesses\u2014wineries, restaurants, and hotels that steadily expanded the PlumpJack brand and turned the young entrepreneur into a multimillionaire long before he was sworn in as governor. Members of the Getty clan would later emerge as some of Newsom\u2019s most reliable political donors, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars<\/a> to his campaigns.\u200b And yet Newsom\u2019s story is not straightforwardly one of extreme wealth.<\/p>\n After Newsom\u2019s parents divorced when he was a toddler, he and his sister were largely raised by their mother, Tessa, a young single parent in San Francisco who, at times, worked three jobs<\/a>\u2014as a secretary, waitress, and paralegal\u2014to support her children.\u200b<\/p>\n Family members recall their mother sleeping in the dining room of a small flat and renting out a bedroom to another family to make rent, even as their father\u2014a politically connected judge who once managed the Getty family trust\u2014exposed the children to a very different world. Newsom has said his mother taught him everything he knows about grit and hard work, even as he navigated his own struggles with dyslexia<\/a> and a school system<\/a> that often left him behind.\u200b<\/p>\n Those dual identities\u2014billionaire-backed businessman and son of a hustling single mom\u2014are colliding in California\u2019s escalating fight over a proposed \u201cbillionaire tax<\/a>.\u201d The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, championed by a powerful health care workers\u2019 union, would impose a one\u2011time 5% levy on the assets of residents worth more than $1 billion, payable over several years and calculated on wealth held at the end of 2026.\u200b<\/p>\n Supporters say the measure is aimed squarely at the kind of extreme fortunes that helped launch careers like Newsom\u2019s, promising tens of billions for public services they argue have been starved by federal tax cuts and rising inequality. Union leaders frame it as a moral corrective: In a state where billionaires buy oceanfront compounds, working\u2011class Californians crowd into spare rooms like the one Newsom\u2019s family once rented out.\u200b<\/p>\n Newsom has not embraced the proposal; he has become one of its most prominent critics. Calling the one\u2011time levy \u201creally damaging<\/a>,\u201d \u201cbad economics<\/a>,\u201d and a threat to California\u2019s long\u2011term fiscal health, the governor argues a state\u2011level wealth tax could accelerate an exodus of billionaires and their businesses, eroding future income\u2011tax revenue that funds schools, health care, and social programs.\u200b<\/p>\n He has said he is open to a national conversation about taxing wealth, but insists California alone cannot afford to experiment when it already relies heavily on volatile income taxes from the rich. Behind the scenes, he has lobbied union allies to abandon the initiative, warning the backlash from nervous investors\u2014some already moving money and operations out of state\u2014could outlast any short\u2011term cash infusion.\u200b<\/p>\n For Newsom, the wealth\u2011tax battle is more than a clash of spreadsheets and slogans: It is a confrontation with his own origin story. The same billionaire class that seeded his first business and boosted his campaigns now stands in the crosshairs of a tax he says could hurt the state he governs, even as memories of a mother stringing together three paychecks shape his instincts about inequality and opportunity.\u200b<\/p>\nRaised by a mother with 3 jobs<\/h2>\n
A wealth tax fight that cuts both ways<\/h2>\n
Newsom\u2019s uneasy stance<\/h2>\n