California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's handling of the coronavirus has been such a disaster that even the Associated Press is reporting on it. Newsom has landed in hot water over his response to the Wuhan coronavirus and an array of bad news regarding his state's fight against COVID-19.
The Associated Press reported on Friday that Gov. Newsom is currently in "the hot seat" over his pandemic response and bad news about the state's fight against the virus. The AP noted that Newsom has spent the summer giving "muddled messaging and bad news" to residents of the Golden State about his plans to reopen the economy and the success, or lack thereof, of the governor's efforts to quell the virus. The AP said the trend was "crystallized this week" by the governor's delayed response to a "data error that caused a backlog of nearly 300,000 virus test results."
The AP called the governor's initial response to the pandemic "commanding," noting the governor "won mostly adherence from the state's 40 million residents" when he issued the country's first statewide stay-at-home order back in March. But all that began to change in May, according to the AP, when the governor "allowed parts of the economy to begin reopening under a complicated, county-by-county process."
Okay, that county-by-country process the AP calls "complicated" is what conservatives refer to as local government. But the AP does have a point about the governor deciding to leave the decision-making to the counties, only to backtrack and seize control from local leaders. The confusion has been nauseating for all Californians.
And the backlog error, which the AP reported began in July but continued for weeks due to a series of errors, led California to not only undercount the rate of spread of the virus but also halted decision-making as to what parts of the economy could reopen. Maybe Newsom can spend California into oblivion, but businesses struggling to stay alive cannot.
And the data error isn't the only "snafu" in the governor's response to the coronavirus. The AP noted that schools, which had been asking for guidance from the state on how to reopen for months, forged ahead with making decisions on their own. Then, abruptly, Newsom prohibited schools in most parts of the state from reopening for in-person instruction, which outraged parents who then struggled to make arrangements in the wake of the governor's last-minute override.
The state's unemployment backlog has also been an unmitigated disaster that has caused Newsom to receive criticism from both sides of the aisle.
The governor was also reportedly late on his property taxes, a bad look for a tax-and-spend Democrat, who has already been accused of acting in his self-interest when it comes to issuing lockdown orders. While wineries in the state were ordered to close down, Newsom's own Napa Valley winery was allowed to remain open.
With someone like Newsom, there's something for everybody to dislike.