Gavin Newsom and his family have had a long and complicated relationship with the oil industry. The latest chapter in the saga, a legal and political dispute over state aid to California’s refineries, could affect Newsom’s presidential ambitions.
The roots of this situation date back to the 1940s, when Gordon Getty, a son of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, lived with the Newsom family while attending school in San Francisco.
Newsom’s father, William, later became an attorney for the Getty oil empire and in 1973 delivered a $2.2 million ransom to a gang that had kidnapped J. Paul Getty’s grandson in Italy, later describing it as “an interesting sort of job.”
After his parents divorced, Gavin Newsom was unofficially adopted by Gordon Getty, essentially returning the favor the Newsom family had given him three decades earlier. In his memoir, Newsom describes being divided between his life as the son of an impoverished single mother and the surrogate son of a family with billions in oil industry money.
In 1975, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, another family friend, appointed William Newsom to a Placer County judgeship, later elevating him to the state appellate court. While on the bench in the 1980s, the elder Newsom helped Gordon Getty gain legislation changing California trust law, thus allowing Getty to break the J. Paul Getty trust and obtain billions of petrodollars.
In 1995, William Newsom retired from the court and became administrator of the Gordon Getty Trust, telling an interviewer, “I make my living working for Gordon Getty.”
A few years earlier, the trust provided seed capital for a wine shop venture that Gavin Newsom and Gordon Getty’s son, Billy, were launching, called “PlumpJack,” after an opera Gordon Getty had composed.
Essentially, Newsom owes his start in business to the huge oil fortune that J. Paul Getty, once described as the world’s richest man, had amassed. Without that connection, Newsom would have been hard-pressed to begin what became a lucrative business career.
Nevertheless, Newsom metaphorically bit the hand that fed him in 2022, when he began vilifying California’s oil refiners, accusing them of gouging motorists on gas prices. Months later the Legislature passed a mild measure to have the state Energy Commission monitor refinery operations.
“There’s a new sheriff in town in California, where we brought Big Oil to their knees. And I’m proud of this state,” Newsom said. It was hyperbole, but within months refiners began announcing plans to shutter operations or threatening to do so, raising the possibility of gasoline shortages and higher prices.
Very soon thereafter, Newsom did a political about-face. He urged refiners to remain and signed legislation making it easier to drill new oil wells.
This year the California Air Resources Board overhauled its cap-and-trade auctions, where refiners and other businesses purchase rights to emit greenhouse gases. The program was renamed cap-and-invest and refiners were given free emission rights as an inducement to remain in the state.
Newsom hailed the changes, but environmental groups are incensed at the turnabout. This month the nonprofit Communities for Better Environment filed suit in Los Angeles, alleging the changes violated the California Environmental Quality Act.
“The amendments lock in decades of subsidies for polluting industries, without CARB having performed the required analysis of their wide-ranging environmental harms that would empower decision-makers to make a fully informed determination about the wisdom of these significant changes,” the suit says.
The Democratic Party’s left wing has been on a roll in recent elections, and it includes environmental activists who view the oil industry as a villain.
Newsom’s newly minted pro-oil stance, plus his family’s history with the industry, could backfire in a presidential campaign.
Dan Walters’ commentary is distributed by CalMatters, a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
