Coronavirus: Newsom avoids clashing with Trump as he charts state's coronavirus response

Mar. 27--Handling disasters is part of the job description for California governors, who have dealt with everything from earthquakes to blackouts to devastating wildfires.

But as the state has been roiled by the coronavirus pandemic over the last few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing a challenge unlike anything in California's modern history, with the potential of a staggering health crisis and untold economic fallout. So far, even some of his political opponents have praised how the Golden State's 40th governor is taking on the monumental challenge.

Newsom was the first governor in the country to order his citizens to stay home to prevent the virus' spread, an early move that public health experts say will likely save lives. He's strenuously avoided clashing with President Trump, even as many of his fellow Democratic officials have gotten mired in spats with the leader who holds the purse strings for federal aid.

And while some of his administration's moves have sparked confusion, Newsom has won plaudits from California officials on both sides of the aisle for his rapid-fire, all-hands-on-deck approach to the crisis.

"He's been rock solid," said Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist and former aide to GOP governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. "He comes off as calm, cool -- and gives us good governance rather than good reality TV."

Newsom was first thrown into coronavirus response mode when his administration helped coordinate repatriation flights from Wuhan, China, to military bases in California. As the virus began to spread in communities around the state, the governor started working from the State Operations Center near Sacramento.

Over the past few weeks, he steadily ramped up the state's social distancing guidance, from telling elderly residents to stay home to closing bars and gyms. He rushed to increase the state's supply of hospital beds and secure hotel rooms to house at-risk homeless individuals.

On March 19, with Bay Area counties already ordering residents to stay home and epidemiological models showing an alarming rise in cases, Newsom announced a statewide stay-home order -- the most expansive use of state power by a California governor in decades. In the days that followed, governors of more than 20 other states came out with similar orders.

Public health experts say putting those kind of practices into effect even a few days earlier can end up saving lives in the long term.

"There's always the danger that if these actions work they will seem like an overreaction -- it takes some political courage," said Anthony Wright, the executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.

Still, some health experts are worried that Californians aren't taking the stay-home order seriously enough, and say Newsom should require tougher enforcement. So far, Newsom has said he hopes social pressure will make police enforcement mostly unnecessary, but nothing is off the table.

Unlike other governors including Andrew Cuomo of New York, who's perfected the art of dramatic press conferences that often get carried live on national TV, Newsom's daily straight-to-camera briefings on Facebook Live are rapid-fire, almost stream-of-consciousness deluges of the latest facts and figures coming in, as he puts it, "in real time."

As Newsom urges the state to "meet the moment," he's peppered his remarks with stories of how the crisis is affecting his own family, like telling his tearful young daughter that he didn't think her school would reopen before summer break.

Sometimes that transparency has annoyed other officials. After his remark about schools being closed for the rest of the year, one Alameda County education department staffer wrote on her Facebook page that it was premature to say that and "everyone who works for him and the entire California Department of Education wants to kill him."

But those moments break through to viewers, said Steven Maviglio, the press secretary for former Gov. Gray Davis.

"It doesn't look staged. It looks real and authentic," Maviglio said. "In these times, people are really gasping for authenticity and accurate information."

Newsom has also been using his Rolodex to solicit help from the private sector. After he saw a tweet from Elon Musk about ventilators, he reached out to the mogul to ask for help procuring them for the state. He also personally spoke with the CEOs of the America's biggest banks, pressing them to allow Californians affected by the pandemic to defer mortgage payments.

Still, some of Newsom's moves have caused confusion. In a letter to Trump last week, Newsom wrote that his office had projected "roughly 56 percent of our population -- 25.5 million people -- will be infected with the virus over an eight-week period." After that dire prediction sparked panicked headlines, the governor walked it back, explaining those numbers were estimates of what would happen without any social distancing measures.

The hastily-drafted stay-at-home order also left local officials puzzled about what the state directive meant for their own rules and which businesses were exempted, although state officials issued clarification a little more than a day later.

Observers say that some level of miscommunication is unavoidable when government agencies are moving as quickly as possible in the middle of an emergency.

For a governor who's clashed with Trump on almost every issue over the last few years, Newsom has been far more diplomatic in talking about the president and the federal government's response than many of his fellow Democratic governors and mayors.

Other Democratic governors, including J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Jay Inslee of Washington and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, have gotten into spats with Trump on Twitter or cable news, blaming him for a delayed federal response. On a phone call between Trump and governors Thursday, on the other hand, Newsom praised the president, saying he was "on top of" improving testing, the Associated Press reported.

Newsom "doesn't think that now is the time to be an armchair quarterback," said Nathan Click, his communications director. The governor has calls with Vice President Mike Pence almost daily, and talks with Trump "many times a week," Click said.

So far, at least, Newsom hasn't gotten as much national attention as Cuomo, who's been lauded as "America's governor" amid his showier briefings and denunciations of federal failings.

One reason is that Cuomo is facing a much larger disaster, with more than 10 times as many confirmed cases and six times as many deaths as California. And with most of the media 3,000 miles and three time zones away, Newsom has a harder time getting his message out than Cuomo.

But observers in California argue that Newsom's less soundbite-ready approach to the crisis isn't a bad thing for the state.

"Newsom has realized that it doesn't do him any good to fight with the president under these circumstances, and it's not what the voters want anyway," said Dan Schnur, who worked as communications director for former Gov. Pete Wilson. Playing nice with Trump "greatly increases the likelihood that the White House is going to give California what the state needs."

Even some of Newsom's critics say his response to pandemic has shown he's up to the job.

"Watching him going into office, I didn't think he had it in him," said Walsh, the GOP strategist. "I give him credit, he's showing real leadership."

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