Governors Face a Trump-Inspired Backlash to Ease Virus Rules
Conservative groups are stirring a series of protests against stay-at-home orders from Democratic officials
(Bloomberg) -- Conservative groups are stirring a series of protests against stay-at-home orders from Democratic officials in crucial 2020 electoral battleground states, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who’s been cited as a possible running mate for Joe Biden in November.
Governors, many of them Democrats, are facing resistance that forces them to balance public health with anger from President Donald Trump’s base. States throughout the U.S. set rules confining people to homes and closing businesses as Washington’s response to the coronavirus epidemic was halting and sometimes contradictory, and consortiums with common policies are forming on the coasts and Midwest.
In Michigan, a Trump campaign surrogate is leading the protests against Whitmer, who has set some of the more stringent orders, including banning shopping for gardening supplies, boating and golf.
On Wednesday, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a conservative group connected to Trump, drew thousands to the state capital in Lansing. Trump banners and Confederate battle flags waved amid what protesters called Operation Gridlock. They blocked streets and defied distancing orders to crowd the capitol lawn. They demanded that people be allowed to go back to work, or at least buy denied products like gardening supplies and paint. Others just wanted to be able to go out on the lake.
The group is led by Meshawn Maddock, a board member of Women for Trump, part of the re-election campaign. Maddock’s Twitter bio says she’s the co-chair of the Trump campaign in Michigan, but the Trump campaign said Thursday it hadn’t announced its leadership in the state yet.
Maddock said Whitmer’s program was peremptory.
“Some of her orders are just arbitrary and, like, capricious, like they don’t even seem to have reason,” Maddock said Thursday. There are “many workers who could easily be getting back to work and getting paid for the things that they do, and she won’t allow that because of her rules.”
Maddock said that while she hasn’t coordinated her efforts with the Trump campaign, Whitmer’s increased visibility as a potential running mate has contributed to the tensions in Michigan.
“She has drawn a ton of attention to herself and it feels like shameless self-promotion,” Maddock said.
Michigan has reported more than 28,000 cases of Covid-19, which is fourth in the U.S., and more than 1,900 deaths, which ranks it third in fatalities. Detroit, predominantly black and politically estranged from the state’s whiter, more conservative regions, is the center of the epidemic there.
Whitmer’s stay-at-home order has many businesses nearly shut down, including bars and restaurants as in many other states. It does allow liquor stores to remain open, which Pennsylvania prohibits, and allows religious services.
The pressure has ratcheted up as more workers are laid off by companies that either are deemed non-essential and must close, or those whose customers are stuck at home and aren’t spending.
Michigan has seen more than 1 million people file for unemployment benefits and Ohio has had more than 800,000. Frustration could easily boil over into other states as U.S. jobless claims surpassed 22 million since the virus took hold in the U.S.
Whitmer has held her ground, arguing that opening the state too soon could bring a second wave of coronavirus cases just as the rate of new infections is starting to decline.
“Michigan had the third-highest rate of cases and deaths, and we are not the third-largest state,” she said. “As tough as this has been, if we have to come back to this in a month or two it will be absolutely devastating.”
Other Republicans have attacked Whitmer, sometimes inaccurately. Meghan McCain, a conservative pundit and daughter of the late Senator John McCain, tweeted that Whitmer’s order kept people from buying child car seats, a post that promoted the governor to correct her.
“Hi Meghan! Our Stay Home, Stay Safe executive order does not ban the purchasing of car seats for children,” Whitmer Tweeted in reply.
And the Trump campaign itself implied that Whitmer was out for publicity.
“The President is doing his job guiding the nation through this crisis, regardless of how certain Democrats are auditioning to be Joe Biden’s running mate,” Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman, said in an email.
Republican governors are also feeling some heat.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine was among the earliest and most aggressive chief executives, canceling events and putting in place stay-at-home orders even as the president downplayed the pandemic. At a capitol press conference in Columbus last week and again Monday, raucous shouts could be heard from protesters outside carrying American flags and signs decrying tyrants, and chanting, “You work for us!”
The protests in Ohio are being organized on Facebook by groups like “Ohio Stands United,” which claims more than 60,000 members and is dedicated to preserving constitutional rights, and “Anonymous Ohio,” apparently an offshoot of an anarchic hacker group known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
Leading the chants on Monday in a red down jacket and a bullhorn was Melissa Ackison, a self-described conservative Republican businesswoman and mother of four who is challenging the Republican incumbent in Ohio’s 26th Senate district. Ackison has ciruclated pictures of herself with the president, despite the Trump campaign’s demand she desist, according to cleveland.com.
“I believe that the virus is real,” she said in an interview. “I don’t believe that his response and the emotionally driven talking points and fear tactics are appropriate to shut down an entire economy.”
Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has also faced pressure, though a move to force him reopen segments of the state economy on the General Assembly floor failed late Wednesday night.
Six hours before the end of a legislative session, Republicans overhauled a home health aide bill with provisions that would have required every state licensing commission, as well as hospital and restaurant associations, to send Beshear new plans for how to re-open their industries every 15 days.
There appeared to be broad bipartisan support for the bill in the Republican-controlled House. But Republican Senate leaders never brought the bill to the floor before the session ended.
That saved Beshear from a quandary of either facing blowback from a veto or the overwhelming administrative work of reviewing plans for adjusting his shelter-in-place orders for each licensed industry.
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