‘America’s governors’: Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom take the lead on coronavirus

Andrew Cuomo adopted the role of truth-teller as he delivered grave news Thursday during his daily coronavirus briefing: 100 more people in the state had died, bringing the death toll to 385. “If Rudy Giuliani was America’s mayor, then for everything west of the Mississippi, Gavin Newsom is America’s governor and for everything east of the Mississippi, Andrew Cuomo is America’s governor,” Sheinkopf said. “Both of these men have the opportunity to galvanize their states and to galvanize large portions of the nation in a way that hasn’t happened since 9/11.” A poll this week from Monmouth University found that governors across the board are getting high marks for the handling of this crisis, and that their favorability remains high among Democrats, Republicans and independents — contrasting with the much more partisan breakdown of opinion on Trump’s leadership. On Thursday, as he described the state’s budget dilemma — increased costs to pay for dealing with the virus, reduced revenue because of the economic hit — he rattled off dollar figures before concluding in his Queens-accented voice: “That is a ton of money.” Newsom, who built his profile in California as a business-friendly technocrat, has highlighted his ties to the private sector in his briefings, name-checking moguls such as Virgin Group’s Richard Branson and Elon Musk of Tesla and empathizing with hurting companies by referencing his own entrepreneurial history. Newsom praised the bill’s added benefits for the unemployed in California, while Cuomo faulted it as “irresponsible” and “reckless” for the amount of relief it provides for New York and other state and local governments.