In recent years, governors have sat on the sidelines as the federal government has commanded most of the attention and airtime. Today, we explore how the pandemic has generated a revival of state and local politics — and made governors into national heroes. Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Background reading:
- Governors of both parties have taken a lead role in confronting the crisis, asserting themselves in ways that have only highlighted the initial lack of seriousness from the White House.
- With his widely watched coronavirus briefings, one governor in particular has stood out: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Here’s how the leader of New York State has become a figurehead for the Democratic Party.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
From the New York Times, I'm likeable borrow. This is the daily today for the past decade, governors
have been relegated to the sidelines of american Politics Alex part on health. The pandemic is changing
it's Friday, equal third, so ask
until the past few months. How would you describe the role of governors in United States? Look, I think that they were very much the supporting cast of american politics. They
perform function that I think people in their states recognise is super important by the
I have not been seen for
decade or more now, as the kind of people who the great mass of american voters look to four,
inspiration direction. Now
no leadership in any kind of crisis. You said a decade or more, so that's a change right now for most of the three or four decades price,
to that governors were seen as the most capable
it is in the country between
one? Seventy six and two thousand eight the country was
Sclusively led in the White House by former governors, except for a four year period,
I remember when I now, president of nineteen, seventy four
Jimmy Carter. There was a major headline on editor evader. They ve got
democratic running or what
followed by robbery,
good evening to all of you from California tonight, I'd like to talk to you about it, a little interregnum, their fur George, it's done
you push them back to Bill Clinton. Welcome to one of my favorite places, the old state houses and import.
Willing to all our concerns, but its particularly special to me than George W Bush. I come from Texas. I've got a record as a governor. I've been setting agendas. It was a country led for decades by governments,
and starting with Barack Obama and now, as a president drop, that pattern has been totally broken, and what do you think I want this during that thirty or forty year period that we all looked to governors,
you know for decades, governors would run for president on a narrative of getting stuff dying
and so many of the issues that were at the forefront of american policy
relating to the size and function of government relating to the budget and education and health care issues like abortion right. These were issues that governors could deal with at the state level and then take that narrative to the national level, starting in two thousand, eight and really the years before that all politics become so heavily nationalized. The media environment is totally different where people are learning about the political scene, more from cable news and the internet than from there
cool paper and the issues facing the country are so much bigger or seem so much bigger than the issues facing any one state, the Iraq war, the financial crisis and the,
recession. These are not challenges that a governor
necessarily has a good story to tell about confronting.
So the nationalization of american politics is kind of the death knell for the governor as the go to figure and our politics. So how does this crisis change that dynamic? You know, I think it didn't need to change that dynamic, but because you have had
Such absent or inconsistent leadership from the federal level for months now, it has really fall
two leaders on the state level to deal
one by one with this crisis that has completely consumed everything else going on in public life, and when do you think you started to see
When it came to the governors, I want to welcome every one of the state of Washington a place where people are very much united and active and content.
In our ability to take strong measures to slow down the spread of this epidemic. So this really start
in Washington State, which is the first place in the country with a large cluster of corona virus cases. I'm very pleased
that the seven million people in Washington. I think you're united themselves as being leaders and acting responsibly right now, and I want to day and easily he's a respected, long time figure in democratic politics. He ran for president last year for a couple months on a platform of mainly confronting climate change, a right. He became sort of a popular figure in the party, but didn't
make it very far in the democratic race. So, starting today I am ordering, pursuant to my emergency powers, that certain events in King Snow Mission, Pierce County with more than two hundred and fifty people
prohibited by order of the governor early in March, he take steps to lock down big sections of his state
especially in the Seattle area, which has the most
severe early outbreak of the corona violence who, what are the penalties exactly four, not abiding by the back door
penalties. Are you might be killing your grandad? If you dont? Do it and I'm serious about this? The principal reason this is gonna. Work is for people to understand the consequences of lack of community responsibility not far from Washington state. You have other outbreaks
in California. The fact is, experience we're having on the ground throughout the state of California, require us to adjust our thinking and to adjust our activities.
Where governor gave a new some guy, who has been talked about in democratic politics for a long time as a future presidential candidate decides
I the middle of the mind that he is going to need to take much more aggressive steps in the federal government and there's a recognition of our interdependence that requires of this moment that we direct a state wide order for people to stay at home. He
is one of the first big state governors to issue where we now think of as a lockdown order. We are confident that the people, the state of California, will abide by them. Do the right thing no meeting
moment, though, step up as they have. We are now at a critical time here in Ohio in regard to the krona virus, but it's not just Democrats and it's not just heavily coastal urban states. Taking these kind of steps in March,
the decisions that we make as individuals in the next few days. The next several weeks will really determined
how many lives are going to be launched in Ohio. Pretty
early, in my view, also have liked to wine, the republican governor of Ohio, taking some of the most aggressive measures to clothes. Schools, ban large public gatherings, even at a point when a higher has a tiny number of confirmed cases, but at the time that might to wine, essentially shuts down Ohio. You don't have any kind of message like that. Coming from the leader of his own party president trap- and here is the truth with or without a test the virus is here, it lives among us and we must be at war with it. This enemy is dangerous, it is relentless and we must stop it from surviving
more applying and thriving. But at this point in the middle of March, most governors are not taking steps like these at all, and many governors are not even speaking publicly about the corona virus as a looming threat to their own states. It is deep breath. That's why all of a sudden, Andrew Cuomo comes at the forefront of this. First of all, this is not our first rodeo. With this type of situation in New York, nineteen sixty eight we had the Hong Kong flew two thousand and nine. We had the Swine flu Avian Flu, a Bowler Sars Merle
and what strikes you about the way Cuomo is handling this look when you have a national scale crisis. Typically, it is the President who people here from every day about
threat that is coming into their homes and into their neighbourhoods and what their government is going to be doing to help protect them. That's not happening here from the White House where it does start to happen is Albany where Andrew Cuomo, who is one of the longest serving most prominent governors in the country in the state that is home to much of the national media uses
platform to speak to an audience across his stay, but well beyond his state about the dilemma confronting governors like him. This is a dramatic time in an unprecedented time and great challenges require great leaders and grew
solutions and that's what this is every single day now the country hears from Andrew Cuomo about the nature of the threat confronting New York in many key
This is the really specific resourcing issues facing the state. We have fifty three thousand hospital beds in the state of New York, where three thousand I see you bet. This is the kind of nitty gritty of governing that most Americans have not paid a whole lot of attention to over the last decade, at least as it pertains to government at state level mixes it together with these sort of philosophizing pep talk further.
Sometimes in these positions you have to make difficult decision talking about the emotional strain and the anxiety that people are facing in a way that I think most people would traditionally expect from a president by my average in these disasters. Emergencies is always been do everything you can prepare for the worst hope for the best and the most consistent message throughout all this time is the measures he's taking are an effort to hold back the worst of the problem, but that in order to actually meet the problem and fix the problem, he is going to need.
Lot more help from the federal government. Each of these governors is experiencing what is probably the most important moment in their political lives. They are all saying quite pointedly that they cannot master this moment
their own that without the resources and the leadership of the federal government, there's only so much that each state can do piece by piece all the way back.
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as member and why I see as Ipc
I'm Wendy Door and I'm an editor on the daily for most
my adult life, I thought of the New York Times as edge.
I ain't news machine that spit out news stories all day, long kind of like a vending machine
and I'm embarrassed to say that it wasn't really until I came to work here at the times that I started to think about the reporters behind those news stories and what it takes to get the story in the first place.
Sometimes these reporters risked their lives. Sometimes they talk to us
two in the morning. Sometimes they call us from a war zone and nodded.
Do they tell us what's happening on the ground wherever they are, but they also give us the context that we need to understand it if you like, hearing
These reporters every day, which I know I do. The one thing-
you can do to support them and the daily is to subscribe to the New York Times if you'd like to do that, go to and why times dot com slash subscribe out so far we ve talked about what a handful of early acting governors have been up to
as this pandemic has spread across the country and more and more governors have to decide how to approach this.
How are you seeing that breakdown of governor by governor well by late March this morning, I have signed an executive order which Institutes
they had home directive, no Marilyn resident should be leaving their. You have sixteen states that, or in some form of lockdown today, on issuing stay home states, think executive order for all michiganders with a population totalling,
nearly half the country. I signed a second executive order stating clearly
that the rules I have laid out supersede all other order.
Issued by county or municipal officials.
They are a sobering reminder of the challenge we are confronting as one New Jersey families have said before. While most of these states are pretty blue, pretty urban there are a couple redder states and their states with republican governors, but for the most part, the overarching pattern here is big states with democratic governors moving fastest, but that of course creates a pretty messy and inconsistent approach in the state by state way. That's right and some of the biggest states in the country that dont have cases detected early governors were inclined to act aggressively go we
and weeks without taking similar steps. These are states largely with conservative republican governors, who are closely aligned with President Trump. Florida is probably the best example of this. This
is a state governed by Republic in IRAN,
Santos, his whole campaign, and twenty eighteen was about his support for President Trump and he doesn't shut down the state for weeks and weeks. You know just a different situation were big, diverse state
If you look at New York state you obviously New York City surrounding areas, some of the other places there just in a different different situation, but I look forward to the guidelines and he gets publicly frustrated with people, leaving other states that our lock down and coming to Florida, pointing the finger
New York in particular, but yet people are right in the subway in New York City people fly all over the place from some of the hot zones. I mean you know really. How does that make any sense if we're trying to to contain this day? So, but this is what happens when you don't have a uniform response around the country and it becomes very, very clear over the course of March and the very beginning of April the
Laura is going to have a huge problem on its hands out. You have identified a bunch of contiguous states in the south, where the leader of generally Republicans loyal to present a trump seem resistant to close
down their state, and I wonder why you think that that is the case. You know, I think some of this is ideological. Bad republican governors and particularly southern governors, have a different view of whether its appropriate and when its appropriate for a governor to use his power to halt bit
this commerce, normal cultural life. Some of these states are more rural states and in much of the country, I think, even to this day there still the perception that the corona virus is an urban problem and clearly that is the case that it is an urban problem. But it's also clear.
Is not just an urban problem and you know in so many of these southern states. It really does also boil down to loyalty to the president and partisanship governor dissent is in Florida is really the perfect example,
the storm in contact with them. And basically you know I've said: are you guys recommending this as he for weeks and weeks resists, taking more aggressive action to mandate social distancing, different situate says pretty much explicitly if the White House told me to act differently, the task
where's does not recommended that to me. If they do you, obviously that would be something that would carry a lot of weight with me. That would carry a lot of weight with me. It's as close as we get to hearing a republican governor who is not
taking action say to the White House. Please tell me what to do, and so
that's not an accident that the republican governors for the most part who do break with the president are people who are so well established in their homes, states like MIKE to wine or who are leading states that aren't really that conserved.
To begin with, like Marijuana Massachusetts, where they may have more political freedom to go their own way than a republican governor of Georgia. In President trumps Republican Party.
I can also imagine how, as a governor of a more whirl stay where the virus is not really hugely present, there would be
natural inclination not to shut down social and commercial life, because many those states kind of have an institutional, so
a distance of houses are really far away from each other. There isn't density, and so it would be natural to wait until the federal government said no, no, no. You need to do this now. I think. That's really right, and I think that sort of magnifying that even further the governors in these states are largely.
Elected by constituencies who are the most representative of the dynamic that you're talking about that the republican governor of Georgia.
Is not an overwhelmingly. Rural state is elected with the overwhelming support of the rural parts of the state. So even at the point, where you see an outbreak in Atlanta, an outbreak in Miami or Tampa or Jacksonville, the governors of these states still have to worry about pressure
the business community state wide and from voters who may see what's going on in my
or Atlanta as law
Julie irrelevant to their own lives, and so
he's governors are really looking to the White House for leadership and direction on what exactly they should be doing. We will be extending our guidelines to April thirtieth too
The spread on Tuesday will be finalizing these plans and providing a summary of our finding supporting data and strategy to the american people right and they got it. Many of them in the last couple of days is my sense when the
resident disclose those really scary models. That said this shocking numbers, you re talking about deaths,
even at the lower end, you were shocked when you see a hundred and a hundred and twenty thousand
two hundred thousand people over potentially very short period of time. Two hundred thousand could die and I felt like one by one: the hold out states started to lock themselves down the president. Just the other day announced they're going to do a thirty day extension for the current guidelines. I mean, I think it's clear that
represents effectively a national pause. That's really how you know so much of this was about partisanship and presidential leadership when the president goes out and says basically best case scenario
a hundred thousand people are going to die. You see one by one. These states flip almost overnight. So so, given those circumstances and given that the unique situation in Florida, I'm I'm going to be doing an executive order today directing offer radiance to limit movements and personal interactions outside the home to only so many annex now do we know that a lot of these hold out would only act when they got a definitive signal from the press
to act and, in some cases them at waiting months into this pandemic. Do we think that they're gonna be meaningful consequences, either good or bad
for the governors who wait as these governors did or for the governors who acted very early on behalf of their constituents. You know right now the public opinion information we have said
That governors across the board are enjoying a real surge in confidence and support from their voters.
The overwhelming political task going forward is going to be. How did you handle this crisis and how many lives did you save and how quickly did you bring back the economy? Looking at the trend lines in the states that have moved most slowly to confront this, it's hard not to anticipate a very, very difficult stretch. Further
governors as the consequences of their choices, become really clear. Finally hawks, I wonder about another aspect of this: the wall of the present and typically as the source of calm and comfort and moments like this thinking, of course, and after
in his fireside chats that hasn't necessarily happened here. It has been instead, the governors- that's right, you know what people have heard from President Trump when he has been attempting to calm the country.
Has been a message that this isn't so bad and it might actually be over pretty fast, that's a message he has moved off of in the last week what they have been hearing from governors in time of war. We have to make sure,
vices, and I thank each and every one of you for all that you are doing every single day. Has been a different kind of candor about just how tough this is going to be and how long it my last crisis can take a toll on, or mental health check in with family call, your loved ones go for a walk, read those books on your list or even go outside and put your holiday lights back up, really a pretty direct message of comfort to people who are understandably, really scared right now practice humanity. We don't talk about practicing humanity, but now, if ever there is time to practise humanity, the time is now
The time is now to show some kindness, Joseph compassion to you, hear them talking with a level of emotional rawness, an directness about the difficulty ahead, really telling their states
that they are facing many many long and difficult months and asking voter to trust them that it will be ok in the Alps? Thank you very much. Thank you. I am convinced that we we can do this. We can do this. We must keep our wits about us. That means all of us yeah. We have a problem. Yes, we will deal with it. Yes, we will overcome, but let's find out better souls in doing
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Transcript generated on 2020-04-22.