Gruesome Newsom Part Two: The Frisco Kid
How Gavin Newsom was created by the world's richest man and the Bay Area oligarchy
As doddering Joe Biden is frogmarched discreetly toward the exits, Gavin Newsom is — to paraphrase an ancient Nixon campaign slogan — spray-tanned, rested and ready.
The California governor’s utter lack of convictions or scruples makes him the ideal successor to a figurehead President who has governed in name only. His ruling class backers can rest assured that he will scurry to do their bidding. The only possible drawback — that the man is sleaze incarnate, an empty suit who oozes the slickness of a SoCal used-car salesman — may actually be advantage now that journalism has been supplanted by social media pablum.
In Part One, we traced the origins of the Newsom family fortune to a close relationship between Newsom’s father and former SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto von Bolschwing. Here we take a closer look at the morass out of which oozed young Gavin Newsom, perfectly situated to do the bidding of his ruling class benefactors.
For decades, Bay Area politics was managed behind the scenes by a small network of wealthy local families, most of whom owed their fortunes to ruthless manipulations in the field of California real estate. Business and political relationships among these potentates are intertwined and incestuous. (Only recently has the influence of Silicon Valley money begun to disrupt the traditional arrangements.)
For example, Gavin’s father William Newsom III once partnered with John Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s father-in-law, to operate the profitable, scandal-ridden Squaw Valley ski resort. Gavin’s aunt Barbara was married to Ron Pelosi, Nancy’s brother-in-law. Nancy herself joined this family from hell, launching her political career, when she married real estate magnate Paul Pelosi — John’s son. (Yes, you need a scorecard.)
The Bay Area had also been colonised by branches of several of the country’s richest families, elite members of the international ruling class. Chief among these are the Pritzkers and, crucially, the Gettys. Nothing happens in Northern California without the involvement of this cabal.
But the billionaires are understandably shy of displaying their power publicly, as doing so would risk exposing West Coast democracy for the glitzy sham that it is. They need fronts — ambitious youngsters who can be bought and manipulated — and this requires continually finding and grooming fresh faces to romance the electorate.
Young Gavin Newsom was the ideal recruit: handsome, ambitious, biddable, and none too bright. All he lacked was sponsorship. He found it in Gordon Getty, heir to a fabulous oil fortune and for a time the world’s richest man.
As mentioned in Part One, Gavin’s father served as family lawyer and bagman for the Gettys. The relationship was close. As a youth, Gavin socialised and travelled with the Gettys and their charmed circle. One can easily imagine him, like awkward Leo Colston in The Go-Between, mingling with these aristocratic creatures and desperately wishing he could transcend his middle-class background and become one of them.
Gavin graduated from Santa Clara University in 1989 without distinction or a clear career path, but Gordon Getty recognised his potential. The youngster needed to be supplied with a credible livelihood and enough folding money to keep him in designer suits and salon haircuts. Public records show that Getty paid Gavin $169,000 for, ahem, “investment advice” and cut him in on a public offering that netted him $69,000.
Now Gavin would need to be reinvented as a “successful entrepreneur.” The wine business was a natural given William Newsom’s vinicultural history with the Nazi Otto von Bolschwing, so Gordon Getty set him up with the PlumpJack Winery. The business opened in 1992. Within a few years, the PlumpJack brand expanded to a small empire, including restaurants, boutiques, nightclubs, and hotels. By 2003, Newsom was a multi-millionaire controlling 11 businesses; 10 of these were bankrolled by Getty.
When the Newsom project was ready for launch, Getty turned to San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, a key powerbroker in the Bay Area. Brown was closely allied to San Francisco’s elite families and to national officeholders including John Burton, Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein. (He also had an affair with Kamala Harris, but that’s another story.) Though little known outside California, he was deemed important enough to be warned not to fly on 9/11.
Presumably acting on behalf of the local oligarchy, Brown plucked Gavin from obscurity and appointed him to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1997. Newsom was, Brown said, “part of the future generation of leaders of this great city."
The Frisco Kid was on his way.
(To be continued.)
Part Three’s time has come!
God, what a sleazy ruling-class frontman, which are essential qualities in a presidential nominee.