First, he canceled his planned primetime appearance at the final night of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday due to wildfires raging across the state. Later, Gov. Gavin Newsom changed his mind and instead showed up in a short video, recorded near a Northern California evacuation center, where he urged support for the Democratic ticket and called attention to climate change.
Newsom sent the dispatch less than a mile from the front line of one of more than 300 active wildfires burning across California after a dangerous heat wave and days of dry lightning strikes.
“The hots are getting hotter. The dries are getting drier. Climate change is real,” he said. “If you are in denial about climate change, come to California.”
The governor also hit President Trump for threatening to “defund our fire suppression efforts because he said we hadn’t raked enough leaves.”
“You can’t make that up,” he said before urging support for Democratic nominees Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The video, which aired near the beginning of the convention, replaced an earlier planned segment which was scrapped due to the wildfires threatening thousands of homes and filling the Northern California air with hazardous smoke.
“The segment that was originally planned didn’t make sense given the growth and severity of the state's devastating wildfires,” Dan Newman, Newsom’s political advisor said earlier Thursday, adding they were “evaluating options while the governor prioritizes the emergency response.”
This perilous moment — hundreds of wildfires, a heat wave, rolling blackouts, the pandemic — has tested Newsom’s emergency management skills. And while captaining the state through difficult times isn’t always sexy, former advisors to California governors agree that crisis management is one of the most important parts of the job.
Steven Maviglio worked for Gov. Gray Davis — whose 2003 recall was partly over sudden power blackouts like the ones some Californians experienced last weekend.
“The lessons we learned from the energy crisis 20 years ago,” Maviglio said, “is that Californians expect when they flip a switch, that the lights come on. They don't want to hear the excuses.”
Maviglio says Newsom did the right thing by taking responsibility for the blackouts, but he warns that could be a tough promise to follow through on if wildfires and high temperatures persist into September.
“It must be extremely frustrating on his part, that agencies that are under his command, literally, almost aren't talking to each other,” Maviglio said, after energy regulators blamed each other for the initial wave of blackouts.
He also added a warning: “When you don't have the total control of a situation, it's very difficult to manage it.”
The longtime Democratic strategist also credits Newsom for investing in the state Office of Emergency Services, or CalOES, early in his administration to help manage these compounding emergencies. Since March, the governor has been giving frequent coronavirus updates from the agency’s command center near Sacramento.
But Newsom’s delivery can make those briefings difficult to parse through, says Rob Stutzman, a former spokesman and advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I think it's been hard for people to seek to feel like they're getting clear information as to what to expect and what they should be doing particularly when it comes to COVID,” he said.
Stutzman also says missteps can undermine confidence in government if they are not addressed directly and immediately. He cited a coronavirus data glitch a couple weeks ago that led to the resignation of the state’s public health director.
“Of late, there's been a lot of that uneven type of communication where it's not really clear what he's trying to say, which leads people to conclude: Is it really clear that he has a firm grasp on all these crises that are occurring?” Stutzman said.
Now, as California braces for another tough fire year, Stutzman said the best way for a governor to communicate action is by showing action, meaning Newsom should put boots on the ground at a fire line or evacuation center — even if a pandemic complicates that visit.
The governor did just that on Thursday, according to a post on Twitter. In a short video, he praised Red Cross volunteers for setting up evacuation centers that honor “health concerns as well as privacy concerns and safety concerns.”
Earlier, before his appearance at the Democratic convention, Stutzman said the governor would need to acknowledge California’s state of emergency.
“It's very difficult to give a national political speech when your state is this virtual hellscape,” he said.
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