When Gavin Newsom popped up on computer screens Thursday to inform 40 million Californians they’d soon be subject to yet more coronavirus restrictions, he grappled with a new challenge: Has the governor lost his credibility right when he needs it most?
With California’s hospitals at risk of overflowing, the governor must convince pandemic-weary residents to listen to a leader who was recently caught attending a crowded dinner at one of the state’s swankiest restaurants, undermining the stay-home message he’s been touting for months.
And there was no denying that tension Thursday when Newsom unveiled the state’s latest shutdown orders: “This is the time, if there was ever any doubt, to put aside your doubt, to put aside your skepticism, to put aside your cynicism, to put aside your ideology, to put aside any consideration except this: Lives are in the balance. Lives will be lost unless we do more than we’ve ever done.”
But this call to action has been muddied by a series of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do moments from political leaders in recent weeks who have been imploring residents to “meet the moment” and sacrifice. Turns out the night after Newsom attended a dinner party on the enclosed patio at Napa County’s exclusive French Laundry, San Francisco Mayor London Breed — another strict-rhetoric politician — attended a dinner there, too.
Breed acknowledged her misstep in a tweet Thursday, writing, “What I especially regret is that the urgency of our public health message in this moment has never been more dire and my actions have distracted from that. We’re in a much different place than even just a few weeks ago and we need everyone to do their part, starting with me.”
But the bougie dinners and multi-household gatherings — which go well beyond just Newsom and Breed to include San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, whose family gathered at his parents’ home for Thanksgiving, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who dined out hours after calling the practice dangerous — have angered Golden State residents who have gone months without meeting new grandchildren and seeing loved ones.
“I believe it’s those stories that cause a lot of people who live in the state to say, ‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter,’ ” said Fred Wilson, a youth soccer league director in Danville. “When the governor is telling you one thing and doing something else, the hypocrisy shuts people down. We’ve seen story after story — people throw up their hands and say, ‘Why am I following the rules if you’re not?’ ”
Barbara O’Connor, a professor emeritus of communications at Sacramento State University, thinks the kerfuffle could make governing more difficult.
“I do think the French Laundry hurts his and Mayor Breed’s capability to be role models,” O’Connor said of Newsom.
Bill Whalen, a research fellow from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, agrees.
“I think he lost a lot of that moral authority with that ill-advised trip to Napa,” Whalen said.
Whalen expects the frustration among Californians to linger, in part because Newsom was caught at a Michelin-starred, ultra-expensive restaurant and not at the Olive Garden down the street from his house.
“If he was busted eating breadsticks, I think maybe you get out of it,” Whalen said. “The sheer, pun-intended, deliciousness of where he was eating … I think it sticks with people.”
Asked about his credibility at a Thursday news conference, Newsom gave a somewhat curt response: “I’ll continue to do my job, that’s what I have to do.”
But beyond bad optics, the implications of leaders saying one thing and doing the opposite is deeply worrisome to epidemiologists and infectious disease experts such as John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley. They know firsthand that getting the pandemic under control depends on convincing millions of people to make smart, science-based individual choices that ultimately put the greater good of the state ahead of their wants and desires.
“When they do things that are contrary to what they are asking you to do, the public is going to stop following the recommendations,” Swartzberg said.
But he hopes that the reality of this latest alarming wave of the pandemic convinces us to behave appropriately.
“The headlines on the papers are going to be very difficult for anybody to ignore and are going to scare the hell out of people,” Swartzberg said. “We’re at the precipice of being like New York City in their catastrophic days. That’s going to influence human behavior far more than the hypocrisy of elected officials.”
Overall, in contrast to many states and the Trump White House, California’s leaders have done an above-average job at driving home the correct messages — both in words and actions, experts say.
As bad as things are in the Golden State, with record-breaking coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations, they are not yet as dire as in some other states, including nearby Arizona, where the San Francisco 49ers relocated to avoid Santa Clara County’s no-contact sports rule. As with politicians, the team’s decision is causing consternation among health care workers.
“They pick the state that in terms of cases is doing worse than California — which is making the statement that we’re going to even put our players in a riskier environment so we can play and make money,” Swartzberg said. “The 49ers are an institution. They need to model correct behavior.”
