Which Getty family members had business or social ties with the Newsom family?
Executive summary
The Newsom family’s ties to the Gettys are long-running and involve both social friendship and business support, centered most prominently on Gordon Getty and his father’s generation (the J. Paul Getty line), with William A. Newsom III (Bill Newsom) acting as the principal connector and later as a Getty family trustee and adviser [1] [2]. Gavin Newsom’s early businesses — notably PlumpJack — received direct financial backing from Gordon Getty, and family social life included vacations and close intergenerational friendships that blurred social and financial lines [3] [4].
1. Bill Newsom: the adviser who bridged two families
William “Bill” Newsom III is the linchpin between the Newsoms and the Gettys: he attended school with members of the Getty family, served as a legal adviser to Getty Oil, helped negotiate during the 1973 John Paul Getty III kidnapping, and later administered and served as trustee for the Getty family trust, a role he continued after leaving the bench [1] [5] [6].
2. Gordon Getty: the investor and longtime friend
Gordon Getty emerges across multiple accounts as the Getty-family figure closest to the Newsoms; he invested in Gavin Newsom’s businesses — reportedly in 10 of Newsom’s 11 ventures and specifically in PlumpJack Winery — and maintained decades-long personal friendship with Bill Newsom and the Newsom household [3] [2] [4].
3. J. Paul Getty’s sons and the wider Getty dynasty’s role
Reporting frames the relationship not as a connection to a single heir but to the broader Getty dynasty: J. Paul Getty Jr.’s sons (including John Paul Getty Jr. and John Paul Getty III) and other Getty heirs were part of the same social orbit, with episodes like the John Paul Getty III kidnapping drawing Bill Newsom into a direct role for the family and reinforcing the Newsom-Getty bond [1] [2] [7].
4. Social ties: vacations, godparenting and overlapping childhoods
Beyond investment, the ties were social and intergenerational: young Gavin Newsom and Getty children vacationed together (safaris, European trips), Gavin was raised in a milieu where Getty family gifts and experiences were part of his recollections, and Bill Newsom even served as godfather to Paul (John Paul) Getty III, underscoring an intimate social relationship rather than a distant donor-recipient dynamic [3] [1] [4].
5. Business support for Gavin Newsom’s ventures
Multiple accounts credit Gordon Getty with direct financial support for Newsom’s entrepreneurial efforts: the PlumpJack group launched with Getty’s financial help, and contemporaneous reporting describes Getty investing in numerous Newsom enterprises, a pattern that critics and chroniclers alike have cited when examining Newsom’s rise [3] [2] [4].
6. Points of tension and alternative perspectives
The archive also records strains: a reported falling-out around 2000 over a real-estate joint project and other disputes shows the relationship was not purely beneficent or unconditional; San Francisco reporting noted periods when Getty and Newsom spoke little after disagreements over business dealings, reminding readers that social intimacy and business entanglement produced friction as well as support [8] [2]. Some commentators use these ties to question narratives about Gavin Newsom’s upbringing and merit, a political framing advanced by critics cited in outlets like Fox and Newsweek; other sources — including profiles and memoir excerpts — emphasize both genuine friendship and concrete financial interdependence [7] [9] [4].
7. What the sources collectively establish — and what they do not
Taken together, the reporting reliably identifies Gordon Getty and the wider Getty heirs (including references to J. Paul Getty’s lineage and John Paul Getty III) as the Getty-family members with the clearest social and business ties to the Newsoms, mediated chiefly through Bill Newsom’s lifelong counsel and trustee role and Gordon Getty’s investments in Gavin Newsom’s enterprises [1] [3] [2]. The available sources document the relationships, investments, vacations, and godparenting cited above, but they do not provide a complete ledger of every Getty-family investor by name or specific dollar amounts for all investments; those finer financial details are not established in the provided reporting [3] [2].