GOP governors tie economy to relaxed approach to virus

JEKYLL ISLAND, Ga. — Republican governors running for re-election have begun trumpeting the party’s more hands-off approach to the coronavirus pandemic, trying to flip the script on an issue that helped Democrats win the White House and control of Capitol Hill in 2020.

GOP governors, especially in populous, diverse Sun Belt states, credit a resurgent economy to their resistance to strict public health protocols they frame as shackles. At the same time, Republican challengers are hammering Democratic governors as slow to relax business restrictions, end mask mandates and reopen schools full time. And across the board, Republicans relish swipes at Democratic bastions New York and California, “lockdown states” where unemployment remains higher than the national mark.

The political and economic realities are more complicated than the rhetoric suggests.

States, regardless of partisan control, have benefited from trillions in pandemic aid approved by Congress and vaccines that governors had no role in developing. Yet Republican leaders believe, at least for now, they can capitalize on circumstances that just last November helped deny Republican Donald Trump a second presidential term.

“Choosing to lock down heavy and hard for an extended period of time hasn’t proven to help states in the long run,” said Joanna Rodriguez of the Republican Governors Association. She said GOP governors “talked to each other throughout the pandemic and talked about what was working. Now we can see the value of that leadership. … Our governors certainly will run on that record.”

But it’s not clear that states with tighter lockdowns necessarily fared worse than others. Economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast in Los Angeles found in a new analysis that among large state economies, those with more pandemic restrictions, including California, generally had less economic contraction in 2020 than states with looser regulations. The researchers argued there was a correlation among stricter protocols, lower COVID-19 infection rates and the gross domestic product.

But that’s not the argument from Republicans.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp recently described his stewardship of a “measured reopening” as the way to “protect lives against COVID-19, but also protect your livelihood and your paycheck.” Speaking at the state GOP convention recently, he took swipes at “Joe Biden and the liberals,” along with “scientists and doctors that were getting paid to sit in their basement during the pandemic” and urge a shuttered economy.

Kemp emphasized the most recent unemployment data. U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics measured a 4.3% April unemployment rate in Georgia, compared with 6.1% nationally. The U.S. rate fell to 5.8% in May. State-by-state data for May hasn’t been released.

Georgia had “the lowest unemployment rate” among the 10 most populous states, even lower, Kemp crowed, than GOPrun Florida and Texas, “and, of course, lower than New York and California,” where unemployment measured 8.3% and 8.2%, respectively.

In Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated his state’s April measure, 4.8%.

“None of that would’ve been possible had we done lockdown policies … had we done a lot of the things a lot of these other states have done,” he told reporters recently. He dismissed a potential general election rival, state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, as a “lockdown lobbyist” and insisted she would have closed businesses and schools.