Michael Newsome is Gov. Tom Wolf’s Secretary of Administration. When the governor called upon him to serve, he had been mostly retired for three years, still working a part-time job as a member of the state Liquor Control Board, but spending more time playing golf with his wife, traveling, doting on his grandson. Life was good, and he enjoyed retirement, more than he thought he would. But the governor – who was also an old friend, a man he had known for decades and worked with saving Wolf’s family business from bankruptcy – called, and he took the job, recalling that he once told him that if there was anything he could do for him, just call. 

Newsome grew up in the South, in poverty, in public housing and, during his youngest years, in a house that didn’t have an indoor bathroom, raised, for the most part, by a single mother, one of nine kids.  It was while he was working at the York Daily Record that he became aware of Tom Wolf. And it was during a period of friction between Wolf – and members of the York business community – and the newspaper that the two men became acquainted. Newsome joined the Wolf Organization as a senior vice president and controller. He was later promoted to chief financial officer until he retired.