Governor Ned’s rise in power rankings
This is not apples to apples. And this is not a data set Nate Silver would accept.
But Gov. Ned Lamont is currently more popular than my dog.
My dog, Declan, is very popular on social media. If I post an amusing picture of him and step away from the laptop, by the time I come back with a cup of coffee, he has 50 likes. By the time he plateaus, he’s usually in the 200-250 range. On March 14, he burst through that ceiling by lying on the floor. A picture of Declan, sprawled in the middle of our tiny little kitchen, where I had to hop over him about 100 times while I cooked dinner, gathered up 353 likes.
On Tuesday night, I put up this post: “You can add my name to the list of people who think Ned Lamont is doing a really good job. And — a point I plan to make on WNPR’s “The Wheelhouse” tomorrow — this is why it matters who your governor is. If you know people who only vote in presidential cycles, tell them this !!!!! ”
The post was text only. There was no picture of Ned leaping to catch a tennis ball in his mouth or anything like that. As of Thursday morning, the post has 497 likes, plus roughly 100 more on Twitter. None of these likes came from my editor John “I hate exclamation marks” Breunig.
As I say, this is unscientific. My social media feed has what Nate Silver would call a “house effect.” It skews blue. Still, I think we all know that, six months ago, if I had posted, “Ned Lamont is part of the species homo sapiens and, as such, deserves the same basic respect we would reflexively extend to any fellow human,” I would have been lucky to get seven likes.
So what has happened? First, in times of trouble, people look to their leaders. The approval ratings of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte have gone through the roof lately even though there’s a lot to be sad and angry about. In your darkest hour, you’d rather think you’re being led by Winston Churchill instead of Bozo the Clown.
Second, Lamont, who for all of 2019 appeared to lack a decisive streak, has suddenly discovered his inner Gen. George S. Patton. He has, with a minimum of dithering, taken swift actions that demonstrated a grasp of the pandemic and, almost as important, met the mood of his citizens.
Let me emphasize the importance of the second part. There has been a surge of enthusiasm for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who, indeed, has managed to play chords of humanism, urgency, impatience, intelligence and empathy.
Suddenly people are demanding to know why he is not the presidential nominee for the Democratic party and why, for that matter, dumb old Joe Biden won’t just release all of his delegates to Cuomo or something.
Here’s the thing about governors: If they’re any good, they know how to talk to the people of their states. And, yes, people in Plattsburgh and Poughkeepsie don’t talk in a Bronx squawk, but Cuomo, when he starts yelling about ventilators in that high Pacino tenor, is distinctly a New York governor.
Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin will have slightly different tastes.
Anyway, back to Lamont. There’s isn’t one Connecticut way of talking, but there also is. Practical. Predictable. Firm but not ironfisted. Smart but not brainy. Friendly but not informal. It could be argued that John Rowland so completely mastered this tone that people were lulled into a false sense of his trustworthiness.
Lamont is hitting those notes.
Meanwhile, he’s made the right moves. He essentially became a coronavirus governor on March 3 after a visit with Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and he made it Job One for a few days, until it became Job Everything.
He closed the schools, the restaurants, the bars, the non-essential businesses, the gathering spaces. You could argue that he waited too long, but one of the worst blunders in governance is to issue an order people won’t follow.
Consider that as recently as March 11, there was a large, angry demonstration outside Connecticut’s high school sports governing body after all playoffs were canceled. This was an indication — one of many — that Connecticut hadn’t grasped the seriousness of the pandemic. Lamont waited until he wasn’t dragging quite as big and long a tail behind his comet.
I have no proof of this, but I strongly suspect Max Reiss has helped Lamont immensely. Sometimes a communications director — think George Stephanopoulos — can subtly reshape the officeholder. I know Max. He’s smart, and he’s savvy about what the information market will bear. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lamont finally got his needle in the right groove shortly after Max showed up.
In recent days, Lamont announced a $25 million bridge loan program for small businesses and nonprofits, used the Governor’s Foot and Horse Guard to help set up field hospitals, and worked his philanthropic contacts in Connecticut’s ultra-wealthy sector to secure large amounts of home education resources (with a special concern that the school stoppage might worsen the state’s education equality gaps).
As of this writing, he has issued 14 executive orders, mostly chock full of sensible provisions. A small example: as one of many items in his 12th executive order, he authorized a process for remote notarizations, which may be helpful for people who, for obvious reasons, may be suddenly eager to get their affairs in order.
Some caveats. These executive orders will inevitably have some dumb things in them. Nobody can make this many decisions in such a short amount of time and make them all correctly. They will also contain things we will be eager to reverse sooner rather than later. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Relaxation of Freedom of Information Filing Requirements.)
Lamont is also taking some justifiable heat over his slow response to deincarcerating prisoners before the virus sweeps through and his decision to keep the gun shops open while other retail shuts down.
In the latter case, he was probably advised that the gun lobby would seek an injunction. He seems to be avoiding drama, fights and tie-ups. I’m a little puzzled by the prison thing. It may come back to haunt all of us.
But there are governors in states such as Florida, Mississippi and Idaho who were more eager to demonstrate their abhorrence of heavy-handed government than to protect their citizens. I’ll take Ned, even if he blows a few calls.
Colin McEnroe’s column appears every Sunday, his newsletter comes out every Thursday and you can hear his radio show every weekday on WNPR 90.5. Email him at colin@ctpublic.org. Sign up for his newsletter at http://bit.ly/colinmcenroe.