Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom has always talked about his desire to reopen schools. However, it was only in the last days of last year that he came up with a plan to speed up his return to school.
Facing the very real possibility of a revocative election in the fall, getting children back to school – and containing growing frustration among parents – has emerged as a top priority for Newsom.
“Parents want to know when their children can safely return to school,” said Robin Swanson, a Democratic political consultant, who added that safeguards like vaccines for teachers and personal protective equipment are important for many parents. “If you lose your parents, you lose California.”
Newsom categorically rejects the suggestion that politics played a role in its pandemic decisions and did not publicly acknowledge the recall effort, even when switching to campaign style events in major media markets across the state. But his advisers acknowledged the obvious: Newsom’s chances of counterattacking would be greater if schools were opened and Californians were widely vaccinated before a possible election, allowing tired voters to resume their daily lives.
The timing of Newsom’s announcement on December 30 of a $ 2 billion incentive package to reopen schools – after insisting for weeks that it had provided enough guidance on the subject last summer – was widely interpreted among political observers in Sacramento as a reaction to the recall effort, a possible attempt to attract parents when the winter vacation came to an end, with no end of distance learning in sight.
The governor revealed his proposal just a day after the news that a $ 500,000 donation had been made to the Republican Party campaign that was working for an electoral recall this year. Newsom’s public image was shaken for weeks after he attended a lobbyist’s birthday party at the sophisticated French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley, despite advising Californians to avoid similar encounters.
With his plan bogged down in the Legislature, Newsom announced last week that California would reserve a portion of its weekly vaccine supply for teachers and school staff in an attempt to return educators to campus. Even so, political pressures continued to increase.
With former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer and 2018 Republican Party candidate John Cox announcing that they would run for governor if the recall qualified and polls showing a sharp decline in approval rates for Newsom, the governor launched a tour publicizing its work with vaccines across the state and invited local reporters to follow – a marked change in the reach of the media compared to its many Internet-only appearances since the pandemic began.
The events, in which other Democrats joined the governor and praised his way of dealing with the pandemic, allowed Newsom to campaign against the recall without having to express his opposition to him.
“No governor has faced a crisis like this – unexpected, across the state, affecting all Californians, putting unprecedented pressure on our health care system that lasts more than a year,” said Rep. Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) at the Newsom press conference in Fresno on Friday. “In other states, you have some governors who have not recognized the science of COVID-19, have moved away from hard leadership work. Ours is not.
“And Governor Newsom led with an unrelenting focus on the groups most affected by this virus and, over and over, he defended the most vulnerable here in California.”
But not everyone in the Central Valley was impressed by the governor. Fresno County supervisor, Ernest “Buddy” Mendes, classified Newsom’s most frequent appearances in his region in the past month as politically motivated and driven by the recall effort.
“He never used to come to Fresno and now, all of a sudden, they are taking pictures in Fresno,” he said.
Meanwhile, as Newsom navigates the complex web of the pandemic and the recall policy, the governor finds himself caught between the unions that have helped him rise to power and the public pressure he has to respond to to maintain it.
The new urgency to reopen more schools has created an embarrassing situation with some of Newsom’s most loyal supporters: unions representing teachers and other school officials who want to prioritize and ensure the safety of their members rather than a quick return.
This week, Faulconer clung to Newsom’s earlier slowness in reopening schools as evidence of his acquiescence to teachers at the expense of children and families.
“Gavin Newsom has waited a long time to clean up this mess and our children will live with their mistakes until adulthood,” he said. “He left the union with all the cards and was not willing to hold them accountable.”
The California Teachers Assn. and other school groups rejected the governor’s plan to reopen schools as early as February 15 – a date that has come and gone without any action. The proposal was not in line with the union’s calls to vaccinate school officials before they returned to work in person, and teachers wanted additional security measures.
While the legislature was negotiating with the governor about the availability of vaccines for educators and whether reopening in areas most affected by the virus should be encouraged, CTA launched a $ 1 million television ad on February 13 that argued that opening schools without prioritizing safety – including vaccines for educators – would only be worsen the spread of coronavirus.
The union says the ads, which were careful not to mention the governor, were in line with previous digital ads, which tried to convey their opinion and fight growing resentment towards educators.
At a news conference last week, Newsom said he had a great relationship with the teachers’ union, “but people can disagree.”
Despite publicly disagreeing with the union’s position that school officials should have access to the vaccine before returning in person, Newsom said on February 19 that the state would offer up to 75,000 vaccines a week for employees who return to the classroom, an announcement seen as an attempt to help appease teachers and staff and facilitate an agreement with the Legislature on the reopening of schools amid increasing pressure from parents.
The battle with the teachers’ union is just the most recent episode in Newsom’s intermittent relationship with organized work.
His surprise announcement on January 13 that the state’s vaccine distribution rules were changing to prioritize people aged 65 and over was a blow to unions representing janitors, security guards and other essential workers who lost their place in the queue. At the beginning of the pandemic, unions repeatedly called for the state to meet basic needs, such as inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment in the workplace. Demands to extend paid medical leave for COVID-19 also went unanswered.
At its executive board meeting last week, the California Labor Federation, an umbrella group of 1,200 unions in the state, filed a motion to publicly oppose the repeal effort. The leaders of many of the state’s largest unions did not expect to vote on the issue when someone made an impromptu motion to accept it.
Labor sources cited different reasons why the council hesitated, with some questioning whether taking a position would validate the recall campaign against the governor before it qualified. Some said that the lack of action betrays tensions between the governor’s office and the unions and the hesitation to publicly support him at a time when so many ordinary union members are frustrated.
There is little doubt that the federation and individual unions will eventually oppose the recall, but many are weighing how much support they will give Newsom.
The National Union of Health Workers, with 20,000 members, is already preparing to support the governor. The union launched a $ 100,000 purchase announcement in an attempt to convince voters on the left that the state’s progressive agenda would fall with Newsom if he were called back.
Jim Araby, who previously led the UFCW Western States Council and now directs strategic campaigns for UFCW Local 5, said that unions need the governor as much as he does.
“I believe that the governor needs manpower to win,” said Araby. “There is a natural tension there, but in the end, for us, for our union, we know that we have a person in the governor’s office who will listen to our concerns and will discuss and negotiate with us to reach an agreement that we can always continue to ramp up. If he is called back, it will not happen. “
Since unions are unlikely to support Newsom’s Republican opponents, some political advisers say it is unclear why Newsom no longer presses to reopen schools immediately. Parents are among the most important populations for courts in California politics because of their tendency to be highly voters. While not all parents believe schools should open immediately, some who do are becoming more expressive.
Open Schools California, an advocacy group for parents of school-age children, is calling on the governor and lawmakers to open schools now.
“The parents are incredibly frustrated,” said Megan Bacigalupi, an advocate for the group and mother of two children in the Oakland Unified School District. “We are approaching the one-year mark for children out of school. We count on our leaders in Sacramento to seek leadership, but also to act quickly when it is obvious what the right thing to do and the right thing to do now is to reopen schools as soon as possible ”.
Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Phil Willon contributed to this report.