After completely renovating an 8-acre, $3.7 million estate in a suburb of Sacramento in 2019, Gavin Newsom's wife and kids are moving back to Marin County, the posh suburb of San Francisco, so their oldest daughter, Montana, can attend The Branson School, the $60,000/year private high school from which Jennifer Siebel Newsom graduated.
While all of the Newsom kids have attended private schools in Sacramento while their dad's been governor, people close to the couple told Politico that the family didn't want to have to uproot the kids from school - especially high school - when Gavin terms out in 2026. Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, confirmed the news to Politico, saying:
“To ensure continuity in their children’s education, the family will split their time between Sacramento and Marin heading into the coming academic year."
Gardon added that the Newsoms aren't selling their Sacramento-area estate, and that the couple aren't looking to purchase or rent a home in Marin. Instead, Jennifer Newsom and the children will stay with "extended family" there. Both Newsoms have family in Marin, where they both grew up. They owned a home in the county from 2011 until 2021, but only lived in it until 2019. As RedState reported, the Newsoms purchased that home for $2.25 million but refinanced it multiple times, the last being a $3.25 million "sweetheart" deal in late 2017, as Gavin's gubernatorial run (in a heavily crowded Democratic primary field) was heating up.
READ MORE: Gavin Newsom's Undisclosed "Sweetheart" Cashout Mortgages Netted Him $3.8 Million
After Newsom won the governorship in November 2018 a newly-formed LLC controlled by his cousin (and Plumpjack corporate attorney) Jeremy Scherer purchased the Sacramento estate in a $3.7 million cash transaction, then transferred the property free-and-clear to Gavin and Jennifer Newsom nine months later before the LLC was dissolved. Documentation obtained and reviewed exclusively by RedState revealed that the Newsoms avoided $4,000 in transfer tax by claiming that they were members of the LLC, but the LLC was not listed on their required financial disclosure forms or tax returns for 2018, 2019, or 2020.
It's possible that the Newsoms needed to go this route because they still had that $3.2 million mortgage on their home in Marin, which they didn't sell until May 2021 in an off-market transaction to Winston Chan, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which RedState exclusively reported.
As Newsom news goes, this one sounds rather anticlimactic. It's common knowledge that Siebel Newsom is no fan of Sacramento, and the rumors around that swamp are that Siebel Newsom and the kids spent most of the pandemic at her parents' ranch in Montana. It's also been rumored for years that Newsom has been having an affair with a high-level staffer who still accompanies him on many of his trips. And, as we learned Tuesday, Newsom will be in Atlanta on Thursday for the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and will be spending a lot of time on the campaign trail stumping for the addled President. So is this simply a case of, "Well, honey, you're gonna be traveling a lot anyway, so I'd like to take the kids back home for high school and to be near family," or is there trouble in First Partner paradise?
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