California Gov. Gavin Newsom is set to release a memoir in late February as the Democrat is considered a front-runner for the Democrat presidential primary in 2028.
Newsom’s memoir, titled “Young Man in a Hurry,” covers Newsom’s personal life and early career, but ends his book before his controversial tenure as California governor.
“This is me taking the mask off, and it’s not just me taking a mask off and then sanitizing what’s underneath,” Newsom claimed in a recent interview about the book. “It’s scrutinizing what’s underneath. It’s stress-testing it, and it’s trying to crack it open further and further.”
Newsom’s forthcoming memoir will trace the life of a nerdy teen who later found himself rubbing elbows with the Golden State elite.
Newsom describes his teenage self as a “gimpy geek,” bowl cut, pimples, and all. Even during his awkward phase, Newsom says he put large amounts of hair gel in his hair—a look that has made Newsom infamous as California’s governor.
The hair gel, Newsom says in the book, became “armor,” according to Politico, “a crutch to get through his awkward teenage years.”
Newsom, thanks to his father’s political connections, entered an elite milieu starting in the late 1980s. His father was a lifelong confidante to businessman and oil heir Gordon Getty.
“Gordon Getty and his wife Ann treated Gavin and his sister to lavish vacations, expensive clothes and a glimpse into how the upper echelon lived,” the Politico report read.
But the custom designer suits and parties at Venetian palazzos with Jack Nicholson, which are also featured in the book, came at a cost.
Accusations of nepotism and that Newsom was nothing but a beneficiary of his elite connections followed him.
“I never considered that … my deeper entry into the Getty world would rob me of my own hard-earned story, a theft that would become one of the very reasons for writing this book,” Newsom writes in the memoir.
