Where Did Gavin Newsom’s Radical Wife Even Come From?

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s wife has made a lot of news lately for staking out far-left cultural positions, but she wasn’t raised to be a bay area hippie.

In the span of a week, Jennifer Siebel Newsom has gone viral for saying she gives her sons dolls and suggesting criminals at San Quentin prison might be there for “accidents,” like her tragically backing over her sister with a golf cart. 

But the First Lady of California grew up in a conservative household, and her husband has previously claimed to be married to a Republican. 

“I grew up revering Ronald Reagan … my father did, so therefore we did,” she said. She added that even though her dad has always been “the biggest champion of women, especially marginalized and vulnerable women” that “unfortunately his politics led him in a direction that is sort of in conflict with seeing women as equal.” 

Gavin Newsom’s wife attributes California’s K-shaped economy to “the devaluation of all that we’ve feminized.”

“Everything that we’ve feminized in American culture — whether entire industries like education, health care, etc., or just attributes like empathy, care, and… pic.twitter.com/jIgpWAhXZv

— Brecca Stoll (@breccastoll) April 4, 2026

Newsom grew up in an affluent neighborhood of California, ultimately attending Stanford University for both undergrad and graduate school. After school she moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting. During her film career, Siebel Newsom claims she was raped by popular film director Harvey Weinstein. She said Weinstein first approached her at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005 when she was a producer and actress, and he was at the height of his Hollywood power.

She said meeting him was like “the Red Sea was parting” and she found him “charming.” He invited her to his hotel, and she said she was nervous when directed to his hotel suite. When pressed about why she didn’t walk away she said, “Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein.” 

Gavin Newsom later accepted campaign funds from Harvey Weinstein, which his wife called “complex.”

Newsom met her husband in 2006 when Gavin was serving as the mayor of San Francisco, and married two years later. In 2011, Siebel Newsom produced a documentary called “Miss Representation,” which is about sexism in American society. 

Despite her militant feminism, Gavin Newsom told a reporter in 2024 that he meets with Republicans every day because he “married one.”