HOUSTON – Governors have always been judged on their responses to disasters, but the coronavirus wreaking havoc across the country these days does not recede like floods and cannot be tamed by calling the National Guard.
The executive directors of the states have been tested to detect the virus that continues testing them, politically, personally and logistically. And they have been forced onto the national and global scene in a way that few governors have endured: endless and very public proof on a highly scientific and changing issue with the lives of their constituents, their state economies, and their policies. races at stake.
Tate Reeves has been the Governor of Mississippi for just under six months. During that time, he has had a very full plate: deadly tornadoes, the floods of the capital city of Jackson, violence in state jails, a vote to tear down the flag bearing the emblem of the Confederate battle.
But the coronavirus has overshadowed all of that, and in the past few days, the virus was threatening the state house and his own home just a few blocks away.
Mr. Reeves, 46, was tested for the virus, as were his wife and three daughters. The tests came back negative, but many of his colleagues at the Mississippi State Capitol were not so lucky: The virus has infected 26 lawmakers, including the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House. Cases have increased across the state (the state has averaged more than 700 new cases per day) and the intensive care units at many of the state’s largest hospitals are near capacity.
“I have decided to replace sleeping with praying,” Reeves, an accountant, told reporters before going into politics.
The pandemic has put Mr. Reeves, a Republican, and many of the governors of both parties in the United States under the spotlight for which none of his aides and consultants have a playbook. Interviews with aides, advisers, and others involved in seven governors’ coronavirus response efforts revealed how much the crisis has upset their offices, their lives, and how they approach work. For some, it has increased their weaknesses and created tensions even within their own parties and their own kitchen cabinets.
The crisis reached a boiling point this month for some governors, as the virus spread and deaths increased in a swath of states that governors had reopened. By this week, the outbreak was growing in 39 states, from hot spots across the Sunbelt to new emerging waves in the center of the nation. Florida reported the highest number of new virus cases in a single day of any state, more than 15,000, since the start of the pandemic. And leaders in some places, including a county in Texas, have been calling for orders to stay home to be returned amid a surge in new cases of the virus.
Reversing the course, a practice that governors prefer not to be seen doing, has become routine in the coronavirus era in policies on masks, crowds, bars, and more.
Mr. Reeves had previously been eager to lift the restrictions that had paralyzed Mississippi’s economy and hoped to have the entire state open by July 1. Now, he has been warning residents of a “slow-moving disaster” and made mandatory masks in 13 of the most affected counties.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott stood firm for weeks when the government was unable to order masks. Just before the July 4 weekend, as cases and hospitalizations skyrocketed, he quickly reversed himself, ordering all Texans to cover their faces in most situations.
Minutes before the announcement, she held a conference call with lawmakers, many of them furious Republicans who have grown weary of their mandates, flip flops, and hasty behind-the-scenes calls.
“He’s doing all of this on his own, as far as I can tell, with little or no input,” said state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a conservative suburban Fort Worth on the call who said lawmakers were not allowed Ask any question. “It is a one-way conversation. Last time I checked we didn’t choose a king in Texas. “
The seven governors whose moments of crisis were reviewed by The New York Times: Mr. Reeves of Mississippi; Mr. Abbott from Texas; Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State; Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida; Governor Gavin Newsom of California; Kansas Governor Laura Kelly; and Governor David Ige of Hawaii have been fighting in big and small ways, in ways that are visible and invisible to the public.
Inslee, a Democrat, handled the crisis without the guidance of some of his staff on several days last week, including his chief of staff. They had to take a day off for permits, a requirement as the state deals with financial deficits caused by the pandemic.
Mr. Abbott has had his deputy chief of staff speak to the head of the Texas Restaurant Association to convey the latest developments, but Mr. DeSantis in Florida, whose wife, Casey, gave birth to their third child in late March often gets along well. the line himself.
“I have no news from the governor that he’s going to call, just call,” said David M. Kerner, mayor of Palm Beach County. “At first it caught me off guard.”
Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, has kept her circle of pandemic advisers small, drawing heavily on the experience of her top health official.
Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Mr. Ige, was criticized, according to local news reports, for keeping his inner circle too small by excluding the lieutenant governor, who turned out to be a doctor in the emergency room. At the beginning of the pandemic, Mr. Ige’s administration was reluctant to expand the tests, but Lt. Governor Josh Green wanted an aggressive expansion. In an interview, Mr. Ige attributed the tension to “misunderstanding and miscommunication,” and said that the lieutenant governor has been continuously involved in the response.
This is a crisis that governors are managing remotely.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Inslee settled at a kitchen table inside the governor’s mansion in Olympia, Washington, for a series of video conference meetings. To put the tablet screen at eye level, the governor placed it on top of a book: “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House.” She used an album, “Strangers Again” by Judy Collins, to prop it up at an angle that worked. On the nearby couch, Mr. Inslee’s wife, Trudi, read a copy of The Seattle Times.
Such are the coronavirus war rooms of state chief executives.
Mr. DeSantis, who has been criticized for reopening Florida too quickly and for not issuing a statewide mask mandate, was perhaps the most mobile of the seven governors, and frequently left home to attend public events. He held three press conferences in three cities in a single week, often wearing a mask that was removed when he spoke into the microphone. Mr. Inslee, by comparison, has been wearing his mask even during videoconferencing, resulting in his voice being muffled.
Without a coordinated federal response, governors are in an awkward role, seemingly exercising much of the decision-making around crisis management, but they also hope to listen to and satisfy the wishes of mayors, restaurant owners, workers emergency doctors and everyone else. . The result: all kinds of new coronavirus committees and working groups, and bureaucratic grunts.
Even with so much advice, the governors seemed to be making up on the go.
Dr. Lee A. Norman, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and colonel in the Kansas Army National Guard, said the coronavirus crisis reminded him of his deployments in the Middle East in the sense that he and Governor Kelly had to make decisions without as much data as they would like. Kansas has averaged more than 400 cases per day in the past week, its highest figures to date. Infections have increased around Wichita, Topeka, and the Kansas City suburbs.
“This has the same feeling,” he said of his experience in the military and with the virus. “We are making decisions before we have complete information and we have to use our best data and judgment and make bold decisions.”
In California, Mr. Newsom wakes up early with his children most days and begins sending emails to his staff at 6 a.m. He puts on a mask and works not outside the Capitol in Sacramento, but outside the command center of the California Office of Emergency Services, a complex in the suburb of Carmichael, California, where he and his family live.
Mornings are for meetings and preparation for the noon live broadcast press conference that Mr. Newsom has held almost daily since the start of the pandemic. The Capitol press corps calls the press conferences “Newsom at Noon” and for a time exchanged bingo cards with their reference phrases: “Turn the curve.” “Know the moment.” “Localism is decisive”.
California acted early to impose a stay-at-home order, but the virus, after coming under control, is on the rise. That is not surprising to Mr. Newsom, who says the early closure helped the state prepare.
“It gave us time to develop our healthcare delivery system,” Newsom said in an interview this month. The state has struggled with an increase in cases; Los Angeles County alone has been averaging more than 2,600 cases per day.
For Reeves in Mississippi, who was sworn in on January 14, one of his challenges has been publicly changing his pandemic stance, from eager to reopen the economy to urging caution and tightening restrictions.
He has spent much of his time in the past few days sounding alarms he had ignored for weeks, telling reporters on Wednesday that “the situation we feared is upon us” and urging people to wear a mask and stay home. as much as possible.
“He has dealt with more emergencies than most elected officials in all his time in office, and this has been like no other,” said Pat Fontaine, who is the executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association and who has been in office regularly. Contact the Governor’s Office.
In some daily briefings, Mr. Reeves has wished the Mississippi a happy birthday: Alex, Brianna, Alana, Mariah, Asher and Billy. One day, he pointed out that a boy was a green belt in karate. And then it came to Ian Sylvester.
“Ian Sylvester loves his dog Happy,” Reeves said, after looking up from his notes. “Everyone these days needs a dog named Happy.”
Manny Fernández reported from Houston, Rick Rojas from Jackson, Miss., Shawn Hubler from Sacramento and Mike Baker from Seattle. Contributing reports were Frances Robles of Key West, Florida, Simon Romero of Albuquerque, NM and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of New York.
