Jennifer Siebel Newsom leads me through her Sacramento home on a gray mid-December morning, replaying the first few years as California’s first family in quick, vivid scenes: This is where her son used to sprint to the backyard. That’s where her daughters played with their ever- expanding menagerie of cats, ducks, sheep and chickens. Here’s the bedroom where Koa, their Australian shepherd, darted out, a surprise on the carpet in his wake. We’re inside, then out, the house giving way to the yard, the yard folding back into the house.
Newsom, 51, is a filmmaker, and she moves like one. She’s light on her feet—talking fast, laughing easily—guiding me from room to room like she’s cutting between takes on set. For Newsom, the house is less a place than it is a feeling. “We had incredible memories here; we raised our children here,” she says. The family moved to the Fair Oaks home in 2019, a few months after Gavin Newsom was sworn in as California’s governor. But as the kids got older and school pulled them toward the Bay Area, they moved to Marin County—a two-hour drive away—and the Fair Oaks house turned quiet, becoming little more than a crash pad for work and events.
