Newsom avoids clashing with Trump as he charts state’s path
Governor was the first in the nation to put out a statewide stay-at-home order
Handling disasters is part of the job description for California governors, who have dealt with everything from earthquakes to blackouts to devastating wildfires.
But as the state has been roiled by the coronavirus pandemic over the last few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing a challenge unlike anything in California’s modern history, with the potential of a staggering health crisis and untold economic fallout. So far, even some of his political opponents have praised how the Golden State’s 40th governor is taking on the monumental challenge.
Newsom was the first governor in the country to order his citizens to stay home to prevent the virus’ spread, an early move that public health experts say will likely save lives. He’s strenuously avoided clashing with
President Trump, even as many of his fellow Democratic officials have gotten mired in spats with the leader who holds the purse strings for federal aid.
And while some of his administration’s moves have sparked confusion, Newsom has won plaudits from California officials on both sides of the aisle for his rapid-fire, all-hands-on-deck approach to the crisis.
“He’s been rock solid,” said Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist and former aide to GOP governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He comes off as calm, cool — and gives us good governance rather than good reality TV.”
Newsom was first thrown into coronavirus response mode when his administration helped coordinate repatriation flights from Wuhan, China, to military bases in California. As the virus began to spread in communities around the state, the governor started working from the State Operations Center near Sacramento.
Over the past few weeks, he steadily ramped up the state’s social distancing guidance, from telling elderly residents to stay home to closing bars and gyms. He rushed to increase the state’s supply of hospital beds and secure hotel rooms to house at-risk homeless individuals.
On March 19, with Bay Area counties already ordering residents to stay home and epidemiological models showing an alarming rise in cases, Newsom announced a statewide stay-home order — the most expansive use of state power by a California governor in decades. In the days that followed, governors of more than 20 other states came out with similar orders.
Public health experts say putting those kind of practices into effect even a few days earlier can end up saving lives in the long term.
“There’s always the danger that if these actions work they will seem like an overreaction — it takes some political courage,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.
Still, some health experts are worried that Californians aren’t taking the stay-home order seriously enough, and say Newsom should require tougher enforcement. So far, Newsom has said he hopes social pressure will make police enforcement mostly unnecessary, but nothing is off the table.
Unlike other governors including Andrew Cuomo of New York, who’s perfected the art of dramatic press conferences that often get carried live on national TV, Newsom’s daily straight-to-camera briefings on Facebook Live are rapid-fire, almost stream-of-consciousness deluges of the latest facts and figures coming in, as he puts it, “in real time.”
As Newsom urges the state to “meet the moment,” he’s peppered his remarks with stories of how the crisis is affecting his own family, like telling his tearful young daughter that he didn’t think her school would reopen before summer break.
Sometimes that transparency has annoyed other officials. After his remark about schools being closed for the rest of the year, one Alameda County education department staffer wrote on her Facebook page that it was premature to say that and “everyone who works for him and the entire California Department of Education wants to kill him.”