California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was out of the public eye for almost two weeks after he abruptly canceled his trip to the COP26 summit, resurfaced Tuesday and said his kids had talked him into skipping the climate conference to go trick-or-treating. Newsom, speaking at the 2021 California Economic Summit, said his four children, upset that he was planning to fly to Scotland and miss Halloween, staged an "intervention" during a family dinner. "I woke up that next morning with something that’s probably familiar to a lot of parents, that knot in your stomach, and I had no damn choice, I had to cancel that trip," the governor said, per the San Jose Mercury News. At the time, his office said he had called off the trip due to "family obligations."
"We all were pirates this year," Newsom said. "Not only did I get that costume, not only did I go trick-or-treating, I was able to bring the kids to work last week." The governor said that with COVID, wildfires, drought, and racial justice protests, he had been on a "damn treadmill" going from "crisis to crisis," People reports. He said the time catching up with his family and his team was "probably the most productive week I've had since I've been governor." Newsom also attended the Saturday wedding of Getty oil heiress Ivy Love Getty, which was officiated by Nancy Pelosi, the Mercury News reports. Staffers say the governor went to the ceremony in San Francisco but not the reception.
Before Tuesday, Newsom's most recent public appearance was Oct. 27, when he received a COVID booster shot, the AP reports. After several days with no appearances, conservative critics on Twitter started using the #wheresgavin hashtag, with some speculating that he had experienced a bad reaction to the shot. In a now-deleted tweet Sunday, the governor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, said critics should "stop hating and get a life," per the New York Times. "When someone cancels something, maybe they’re just in the office working; maybe in their free time they’re at home with their family," she wrote. Newsom's office said Monday that much of his time out of the public eye was spent working with his team in the state Capitol on issues including vaccines for children. (More Gavin Newsom stories.)
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