ALBANY, NY (AP) – At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, two Democratic governors at the opposite end of the country were hailed as heroes for their leadership in a crisis. They are now leaders on the ropes.
Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California they find themselves embroiled in different political problems. For Cuomo, it is a federal investigation to find out if his administration intended to hide the true toll of the pandemic. For Newsom, he is advocating a recovery effort fueled by opposition to their closures and by their own personal mistakes.
But for both men the conclusion is clear: if you are not careful, the same crisis that can increase stocks can make you fall just as easily.
“We’ve had too many moments accomplished by the mission,” said Rebecca Katz, a New York City-based Democratic strategist who presented a major challenge against Cuomo in 2018, referring to the untimely boasting of former President George W Bush days after the conquest. of Iraq.
The COVID-19 virus has been a particularly painful illustration of this point. The virus is now spreading to the second year, a schedule few could have understood when schools and jobs were first closed last March and rulers controlling the closures played prominent roles in northern life. -americans.
Cuomo and Newsom took advantage of the moment in their own way. Cuomo appeared on television for daily briefings that were paternalistic, almost philosophical, and also harshly criticized the Trump administration. They became a must-see television nationwide, helped in part by their CNN news host brother. Meanwhile, Newsom instituted early closures and for a time his condition prevented the worst of the virus. It was a softer, more reassuring presence. He studiously avoided partisanship, even landing in an announcement by President Donald Trump.
But ultimately, it was their actions, not their tone or their words, that brought them to earth.
“All of this is a lot of difficult stuff,” California strategist Rob Stutzman said, noting that governors are judged by the results and that the results of this crisis have been bad everywhere. “In the end, these different approaches that governors have taken have made very little difference because, well, it’s a virus.”
Several governors have managed to avoid major political reactions, such as Republican Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Democrat Jared Polis in Colorado. But the difficulties of Cuomo and Newsom show how large states are exceptionally difficult to operate and always under the microscope, which has also been demonstrated this week in Texas, as the nation’s second-largest state suffered extensive court cuts. energy during a deep freeze that provoked criticism of his Republican Governor, Greg Abbott.
“New York and California are under a magnifying glass,” said Jared Leopold, a former spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. “All the good that goes on there looks five times better and all the bad looks five times worse.”
While the coronavirus may have first landed on U.S. land on the west coast, it exploded in public consciousness in March when New York was devastated by a horrific outbreak. As the epidemic spiraled on March 25, Cuomo issued a directive banning nursing homes from refusing patients based solely on a diagnosis of COVID-19. Cuomo defended the directive as an effort to prevent catastrophic hospital overcrowding and discrimination against virus patients.
Despite his state’s death toll (more than 46,000 people in New York State have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University), Cuomo’s popularity rose and some Democrats in the spring and summer they favorably contrasted his response with Trump’s courage and false optimism, wondering if Cuomo could replace Joe Biden on his ticket or sign up as a vice presidential candidate. In October, Cuomo made a first round of victory, launching a book entitled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
But the problem of nursing home erupted on the political scene with two recent revelations. First, the Democratic state attorney general punished the Cuomo administration for minimizing the number of deaths in nursing homes by excluding certain fatalities from the count. The Cuomo administration then revealed that at least 15,000 people living in long-term care centers have died from COVID-19, almost double what Cuomo had initially revealed.
The New York Post reported that a member of the Cuomo administration told lawmakers he had withheld the figures for fear they would be “used against us.” A furious Cuomo at a news conference accused Ron Kim of corruption, a Democratic state lawmaker who spoke to the Post.
Kim said Cuomo had called him and threatened to “destroy it.”
“The history of nursing homes really exposed a bit about questions about their leadership style and the success of their leadership during COVID,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. “The governor wrote a book that presented his achievements and we don’t know if we are halfway through the pandemic.”
The fall in California has been 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, even though he was telling Californians to avoid meetings.
The restaurant scandal occurred when the California image began to fade from COVID’s response model. The increase in cases and declining capacity in hospitals caused Newsom to restore home stay orders between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Republicans had distributed withdrawal requests against Newsom months earlier, complaining about their homelessness management and the economy, but they changed their COVID-19 response to their complaints and began to gather signatures.
In January, Newsom abruptly lifted home stay orders, prompting accusations of abandoning science. He was then forced to reform the state vaccine distribution system. Now, state coronavirus figures are coming down. His job approval rating also has.
Stutzman said Newsom suffers from not providing the smooth, efficient government he promised when he was elected. But part of his downfall, and that of Cuomo, was inevitable because they are no longer compared to Trump and his often practical approach. to the virus response.
“Any of those Democratic governors will come out of those initial highs that got them better than the Republican governors,” argued Stutzman, a Republican. “Democrats across the country got a false push for that because of Trump, but when everything is clear, it looks the same.”
The governors’ problems are a warning to Biden, a Democrat who has said he now owns the pandemic response and will be judged by the way he delivers.
“At least the Biden administration was able to see how the others did it first,” Katz said.
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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.