ALBANY, NY (AP) – At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, two Democratic governors at opposite ends of the country were hailed as heroes for their leadership in a crisis. Now they are leaders on the ropes.
Andrew Cuomo from New York and Gavin Newsom from California are involved in different political problems. For Cuomo, it is a federal investigation to see if your administration has tried to hide the true toll of the pandemic. For Newsom, it is to avoid a recall effort fueled by opposition to his blockages – and his own personal mistakes.
But for both of them, the end result is clear: if you are not careful, the same crisis that can elevate your actions can easily bring you down.
“We had many moments of mission accomplished,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist based in New York City who ran the first challenge against Cuomo in 2018, in reference to the premature ostentation of former President George W. Bush days after the conquest from Iraq.
The COVID-19 virus was an especially painful illustration of this point. The virus is now extending into its second year, a timeline that few could have understood when schools and workplaces were first closed last March and the governors who control the blockades have played prominent roles in the lives of Americans .
Cuomo and Newsom seized the moment in their own way. Cuomo went on television to receive daily instructions that were fatherly, almost philosophical and also severely critical of the Trump administration. They became mandatory TV across the country, helped in part by their brother newscaster on CNN. Meanwhile, Newsom instituted initial blocks and, for a time, his condition prevented the worst of the virus. He was a softer, reassuring presence. He carefully avoided partisanship, even publishing an announcement by President Donald Trump.
But, ultimately, it was their actions, not their tone or words, that brought them back to earth.
“This is all a lot of difficult things,” said California strategist Rob Stutzman, noting that governors are judged by the results and the results of this crisis have been bad everywhere. “At the end of the day, these different approaches that the governors took made very little difference because, well, it’s a virus.”
Several governors have managed to avoid major political reactions, like Republican Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Democrat Jared Polis in Colorado. But Cuomo and Newsom’s difficulties show how big states are exceptionally difficult to manage and always under the microscope – something also demonstrated this week in Texas, when the country’s second largest state suffered prolonged power cuts during a deep freeze that sparked criticism to your Republican Governor, Greg Abbott.
“New York and California are under a magnifying glass,” said Jared Leopold, a former spokesman for the Association of Democratic Governors. “Everything good that happens there looks five times better and everything bad looks five times worse.”
Although the coronavirus may have first landed on American soil on the West Coast, it exploded in public consciousness in March, when New York City was destroyed by a horrific outbreak. As the epidemic grew, Cuomo on March 25 issued a directive prohibiting nursing homes from refusing patients on the basis of a COVID-19 diagnosis alone. Cuomo defended the guideline as an effort to avoid catastrophic hospital overcrowding and discrimination against patients with viruses.
Despite the death toll in his state – more than 46,000 people in New York State died of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University – Cuomo’s popularity soared, and some Democrats in the spring and summer favorably contrasted his response with Trump’s bravado and false optimism, wondering if Cuomo could replace Joe Biden on his ticket or sign up as a candidate for vice president. In October, Cuomo took a lap of early victory by launching a book entitled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Pandemic COVID-19”.
But the issue of the nursing home has exploded on the political scene with two recent revelations. First, the state’s Democratic attorney general criticized the Cuomo administration for minimizing the death toll in nursing homes by excluding certain deaths from counting. Cuomo’s administration then revealed that at least 15,000 people living in long-term care institutions died of COVID-19, almost double the number that Cuomo had initially released.
The New York Post reported that a member of the Cuomo administration told lawmakers that it did not release the figures for fear that they would be “used against us”. A furious Cuomo at a news conference accused Ron Kim, a Democratic state legislator who spoke to the Post, of corruption.
Kim said Cuomo had called him and threatened to “destroy it”.
“The history of nursing homes really exposed a little bit about the issues of their leadership style and the success of their leadership during COVID,” said Christina Greer, professor of political science at Fordham University. “The governor wrote a book praising his achievements and we don’t know if we’re halfway out of the pandemic.”
The collapse in California was more gradual. A month after Cuomo released his book on coronavirus, an embarrassed Newsom apologized for attending a lobbyist’s birthday party at the elegant French Laundry restaurant, while telling Californians to avoid meetings.
The restaurant scandal arose when the image of California as a model for COVID’s response began to fade. The increase in cases and the reduction in the capacity of hospitals led Newsom to reinstate requests to stay at home between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Republicans had distributed recall petitions against Newsom months earlier, complaining about how he dealt with the homeless and the economy, but switched to include his COVID-19 response in their complaints and started to collect signatures.
In January, Newsom abruptly suspended home orders, prompting accusations that he was abandoning science. He was then forced to overhaul the state’s vaccine distribution system. Now, the state’s coronavirus numbers are dropping. Your job approval rating also.
Stutzman said Newsom is suffering from failing to provide the efficient and smooth government he promised when he was elected. But part of their downfall, and that of Cuomo, was inevitable because they are no longer being compared to Trump and his approach often without intervention to the virus response.
“Any of these Democratic governors will come out of those initial highs that they had that were better than Republican governors,” argued Stutzman, a Republican. “Democrats across the country got a false boost from this because of Trump, but when it all comes out, it looks the same.”
The problems of the governors are a warning to Biden, a Democrat who has claimed to be the owner of the pandemic response and will be judged on how he responds.
“At least the Biden government had to see how everyone else did first,” said Katz.
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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California contributed to this report.