Photo: Sacramento News
A surprising no-show at the Cop26...California Governor Gavin Newsom...who abruptly dropped out of the International Climate Summit because of unspecified "family obligations".
Participating Tuesday in a fireside chat at the 2021 California Economic Summit - highlighting the state's ongoing recovery from the pandemic - Gov. Newsom revealed he stayed home to celebrate Halloween with his family after his kids staged an intervention of sorts. He says he dressed up as a pirate. "I've been on this damn treadmill. We've gone from crisis to crisis -- from wildfires to extreme drought to social justice and unrest" while dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, Newsom said. He added that after he had defeated the recall effort in mid-September, he had jumped back into bill signings and other state business during an intense work period.
The California governor, whose last public appearance before Tuesday's conference had been when he got his Covid-19 booster shot on October 27, said he had spent last week at the Capitol "diving deep" into issues at the state's ports and plans to curb a winter Covid surge, and writing the upcoming state budget, according to CNN.