Newsom the Beneficent? California Governor Steps Into Pandemic Supply Vacuum – Lost Coast Outpost

Gov. Gavin Newsom writes down a note during a March 28 tour of the Bloom Energy in Sunnyvale, which refurbished ventilators to meet the COVID-19 pandemic. This week Newsom announced the state would loan 500 ventilators to the national stockpile for use by New York and other states, and that it would share excess masks from its massive purchase of them. Photo by Beth LaBerge/Pool Photo via AP

###

California provides.

Thats the message that Gov. Gavin Newsom has been sending to the rest of the country over the last week. For those short on ventilators, the Golden State will share its mechanical bounty, sending hundreds to New York, New Jersey and Illinois, ferried by Californias uniformed National Guard.

For those who lack protective masks, California as per an announcement he made on MSNBCs Rachel Maddow show last night will be amassing 200 million per month. Enough to meet the states needs. And maybe your states too.

We need to coordinate and organize our nation-state status as we can, only in California with our procurement capacity that is quite literally second only to the United States, the governor told reporters this afternoon. California would act as a catalyst to increase supply not only for the states health care workers, but for those in other states and perhaps other countries across the globe.

Thats how we perceive our role.

Newsoms offer to share Californias public health resources surely makes for good public health policy. No doubt, sharing extra health equipment during a pandemic is also good karma.

This is not political, this is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining Gov. Gavin Newsom

But its also good politics. Unsurprisingly Newsom, widely believed to harbor national political ambitions, refuses to characterize it in those terms.

This is not political, this is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining, this is all in the spirit of all of us stepping into this moment and doing what we can, he said in response to a question from CalMatters. California is just uniquely resourced.

In another crisis or under a different president, thats a role one might expect of the White House. After spending the first weeks after the novel coronavirus made landfall in the United States downplaying its severity, President Donald Trump has since taken a rather hands-off approach when it comes to providing necessary supplies, coordinating purchases of protective equipment or using national emergency powers to force manufacturers to produce more of it.

Try getting it yourselves, the president advised state governors in a conference call in mid-March, a decentralized approach that former Massachusetts Gov. Martin OMalley described as a Darwinian approach to federalism.

With the federal government receding, governors offices have attained a new kind of prominence, said California political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.

Were returning to the Articles of Confederation where the federal government is just there for war and printing money, she said. Its the local and state governments the governors that are moving into the vacuum and creating the leadership and exercising the power in this crisis.

For at least a decade, political focus and news coverage has been increasingly nationalized, with governorships, once a predictable stepping stone to the White House, fading from public view, she said. No longer.

Who do Americans trust most to deal with the pandemic?

Cuomo: 23%

Trump: 20%

Newsom: 3%

Monmouth Poll taken first week of April

On daytime television, they are interrupting even the soap operas at noon to carry Newsom live, she said. Ive never seen that!

In that respect, Newsom still cant compete with the star power of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Chief executive of the state that has been hardest hit by the pandemic and which is home to some of the countrys most prominent television and print news Cuomos widely televised daily briefings have earned him a degree of national trust that seems to rival the presidents.

According to a Monmouth University poll conducted in the first week of April, 23% of respondents named Cuomo as the public official they trust most to deal with the pandemic. 20% put their trust in Trump. Only 3% named Newsom.

That may change now that Newsom is suggesting he could come to the rescue of some other states if California has spares from its equipment bounty. Its yet another way that Californias governor has distinguished himself from his counterparts in other states. Newsom was the first to call for a statewide shelter-in-place order, issuing the edict days before Washington, New York and Louisiana and weeks before Arizona and Florida. In the weeks since, there are faint signs that California may escape the worst ravages of the virus though its still too early to say whether Newsom and local leaders can take credit.

Another contrast in leadership styles: Amid a coronavirus outbreak aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship, Newsom coordinated with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Trump administration to offload and quarantine the passengers in the Bay Area. He praised Schaaf and other local elected leaders for showing the world what makes our state great coming to the rescue of thousands of people trapped aboard this ship and helping tackle a national emergency.

In Florida, where cruise ships loaded with sick passengers await disembarkation, Gov. Rob DeSantis said the state would only accept the Floridians.

In announcing his new plan this afternoon, Newsom evoked his Jesuit education.

The Bible teaches us we are many parts, but one body, he said. Father Coz was my econ teacher at Santa Clara University and he began every single lecture by reminding us of our web of mutuality.

Plans to produce hundreds of millions of new masks and potentially provide them to other states remains a hypothetical.

Not everyone has applauded Newsoms generosity. With hundreds of California ventilators lent out to other states in need, Riverside County Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, a former Republican legislator, told The Los Angeles Times that he worried whether regional hospitals would be able to get the assistance that were going to need in a week or two weeks out.

For now, plans to produce hundreds of millions of new masks and potentially provide them to other states remains a hypothetical.

Newsom said that a number of governors had welcomed his plan to mass-purchase equipment and share Californias excess because they understand we are helping increase supply, we are not taking away a limited number of supplies.

Newsoms office has not yet responded to the question of which other states he was referring to.

Tara Lee, a spokesperson for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said in a statement that Governor Newsom has expressed his hope that the California procurement system will soon be in a sufficiently strong position that they could share some of the opportunities with other states, and Gov. Inslee looks forward to discussing that.

Despite their past Twitter cage-matches, Newsom, a progressive Democrat, has been uncharacteristically friendly with the Republican president since the beginning of the pandemic. Now he regularly praises his former political nemesis. Any criticisms of the federal government have been indirect, sandwiched between compliments.

We have received just over 1 million (medical masks) from the federal government, Newsom told Maddow last night. Its not an indictment. Its not a cheap shot. At the end of the day they dont have the masks at the national stockpile.

I think thats American, thats neighborly. But clearly every politician is looking at the next job. GOP national committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon

Thats earned him high praise from Harmeet Dhillon, the Republican Partys national committeewoman from California.

I cant say Im ashamed of the governor, she said. Overall I give the governor an A in terms of his tone and his suspending of the normal partisan attacks on the president.

She does not even begrudge him trying to glean a political advantage as he leading the nation-state of California through this crisis.

When you look at him offering aid to other states, I think thats American, thats neighborly. But clearly every politician is looking at the next job, she said. I think hes gunning for president as is Andrew Cuomo.

But while Newsoms decision to begin sending aid to other states and coordinating purchases could be seen as his strongest critique of the presidents leadership style, other governors have been blunter.

There should have been a coordinated effort by the federal government, Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker told CNN on March 22. Were competing against each other, were competing against other countries, you know, its a Wild West out there.

Its like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained a week later. The federal government, FEMA, should have been the purchasing agent, buy everything and then allocate it by need to the states.

Even medical equipment manufacturers have asked the federal government to tell them what to do.

In a letter to FEMA, Scott Whitaker, president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association industry group, wrote that it is difficult for manufacturers to establish these priorities and requested the Trump administrators leadership and advice in deciding how to allocate these products in the most effective way and to designate a lead agency, such as FEMA, to oversee these allocation decisions.

But so far Trump has been clear that he does not see his role as purchaser-in-chief. Were not a shipping clerk, he said in mid-March. When a reporter asked him last week about the inefficiency of states outbidding one another for desperately needed personal protective equipment, the president said that it was up to each governor to work that out.

He also blamed the states for lack of preparation.

They waited, he said. They didnt want to spend the money because they thought this would never happen. And their shelves, in some cases, were bare.

That tactic has been applauded by some conservative commentators, who see in Trumps restraint the wisdom of the founding fathers.

This is of course exactly the way federalism is supposed to work, wrote John Daniel Davidson, political editor at the Federalist. We should expect the government power thats closest to affected communities to be the most active, while Washington, D.C., concern itself with larger problems, like developing a vaccine and controlling our borders and ports of entry.

The U.S. Constitution makes state and local leaders the first deciders in a pandemic, said Laura Kahn, a doctor and public health researcher at Princeton, and the author of Whos in Charge?: Leadership during Epidemics, Bioterror Attacks, and Other Public Health Crises.

But Trumps reluctance to help coordinate the various states policies and plans has been unique and uniquely troubling, she said.

Thats really unprecedented having the president pit one state against the otherWere supposed to be the United States helping each other out, not survival of the fittest, she said. Given that we dont have a federal government to coordinate this, these times call for the leadership of the states to step up.

###

Jackie Botts contributed reporting to this report.CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

See more here:
Newsom the Beneficent? California Governor Steps Into Pandemic Supply Vacuum - Lost Coast Outpost