CALIF., KISS OFF!
Gavin biz pal flees
CALIFORNIA Gov. Gavin Newsom has been accused of being out of touch with constituents during the pandemic — but one of his closest business confidantes has skipped out of the state altogether.
Shyla Hendrickson — who has controlled Newsom’s wine-and-hotel company, PlumpJack Group, through a blind trust since Newsom (inset) took office in 2018 — spent most of the pandemic in Park City, Utah, where COVID restric- tions were far more lax than in California, sources told The Post.
While Golden
State residents chafed over lockdowns that mandated remote learning in schools until April, Hen- drickson’s kids were not only heading to classrooms since last August but playing on the volleyball team, whose in-person tryouts were last July, according to social-media posts and a team schedule. In California, indoor youth sports were banned until this March.
Meanwhile, Hendrickson’s NFL-agent husband, Doug — with whom she has been hunkered down in a $3 million mansion near the posh mountain resort that’s home to the Sundance Film Festival — has apparently been taking advantage of Utah’s looser rules for restaurants. The state reopened indoor dining in May 2020 versus this March for California — five months after Newsom was seen at a maskless dinner party in November.
In February, Doug Hendrickson sparred with Andrew Gruel, a California restaurateur and Food Network personality who criticized Newsom’s indoor-dining restrictions as a “slap in the face to every restaurant worker” and called on the governor to resign.
In a since-deleted tweet to Gruel, Doug Hendrickson wrote, “just was at your park city spot — worry about that service and menu first — horrible!”
Reached by The Post last month, Hendrickson — whose Twitter account, like his wife’s, indicates his location is San Francisco — denied that he moved his family to Utah.
“No, no, no — I’m not living in Utah,” he insisted in a phone call. “We’ve been out here for a few months on a sabbatical, but we’re full-time California residents.”
Less than two weeks after being contacted by The Post, the Hendricksons packed up and moved out of Park City this past weekend, a source told the Post.
Reached on the phone last month, Shyla Hendrickson said she was about to board a 5½-hour plane ride to an unspecified destination.
“I will circle up with Gavin’s communications — the governor’s communications director and somebody will get back to you,” she said.
Brian Brokaw, a political adviser to Newsom, told The Post he would have someone from the Governor’s Office provide comment, but didn’t follow up. Reps for PlumpJack also didn’t comment.