Mostly silent Democrats
Despite the ongoing pandemic deaths, Democrats’ messaging on COVID has been muddled over the last year.
The party has largely followed the lead of President Biden’s administration, which trumpeted the lifting of mask recommendations last year amid an aborted attempt to get back to normal by the Fourth of July, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which eased its guidelines and said COVID was “here to stay” in August.
Nationwide, Democrats have been cautious about COVID policies after the backlash against masks and lockdowns, especially following Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory last year.
During his campaign, Youngkin criticized the state’s school closure policies.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ended the mask mandate on public transportation just this past week. In Florida, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, then running for governor, posted a photo of herself maskless on a plane after the Transportation Security Administration ended its rule requiring masks on planes in April. “Peace out to the TSA mask mandate,” she wrote.
Still, a majority of Americans in an April AP-NORC poll, 56%, were in favor of mask requirements on planes, trains and buses. But by August, a New York Times poll found the share of even “very liberal” people who said COVID was a great risk to their own personal health fell 13 points from earlier in the year to just 34%.
“They can see public opinion polls as well as anyone,” Jewett said. “So Democrats are trying to hit other things that they think are more important, or that voters care about.”
But, he said, “I do sometimes wonder if there isn’t potentially an opening [on the issue]. Because a lot of times in politics, voters don’t care about things until you start bringing them up.”
DeSantis has gone further than many other GOP governors, holding roundtables with “natural immunity” supporters, telling high school students to take off their masks at a press conference, and not recommending COVID vaccines for children, which he has dismissed as “baby jabs.”
The governor also battled local school boards and governments over their continued mask mandates following his order in 2021 allowing parents to ignore them.
Crist’s running mate Karla Hernandez-Mats, the Miami teachers union president, alluded to the controversy at an Orlando event Tuesday but immediately pivoted to the campaign’s abortion rights message.
“What’s funny is that they actually attacked me for keeping our kids safe in our schools and preventing unnecessary illness and death,” Hernandez-Mats said. “And yet they turn around and literally risk the lives of every woman in the state by preventing any legal exemptions, including life-saving procedures. At every turn, Ron finds a way to play God with our lives.”
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Julia Friedland criticized Hernandez-Mats on school closures and mask mandates, calling her “the perfect fit for lockdown lover Crist’s unpopular, anti-parents campaign.”