As Oregon health care providers sound the warning that they’re overwhelmed by a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, Gov. Kate Brown announced new restrictions on Friday aimed to stem the pandemic’s spread.
While Brown says her decisions are being driven by the best available science, Republican state leaders continue to say she is vastly overreaching her authority and driving the economy into the ground.
The response to COVID-19 isn’t a strictly partisan issue. People throughout the state have chafed under the restrictions and their impact on the economy, small businesses, vulnerable populations, schools and mental health. The disease has touched all corners of the state.
Meanwhile, courts have backed Brown to date, saying she is acting within her executive authority when issuing coronavirus edicts statewide.
But in Salem, as nationally, Republicans are using it as a wedge issue, claiming the governor’s strategy to address record levels of cases and hospitalizations is misguided, a major overreach of her constitutional authority or part of a plot to expand Democratic control in the state.
Oregon set its single day record for positive COVID-19 cases this week and broke new records for hospitalizations. Brown held a call with lawmakers Friday morning to explain her “two week freeze” on gathering sizes and other measures to stop the rapid spread of the disease. The freeze begins next Wednesday, and could stretch to four weeks in more populated areas, including Multnomah County. Brown did not take questions other than on the chat function of the virtual call.
Republicans made their opposition clear Friday.
Sen. Tim Knopp, R- Bend, said he still thinks the governor’s orders are unconstitutional and that further restrictions on businesses and the economy were misplaced given that health authorities identified social and family gatherings as the main source of the increase in community spread.
Knopp said new restrictions would be a significant problem for restaurants and their low-wage workers, and “incredibly problematic for our faith community” because limiting gathering sizes to 25 people won’t be workable, especially during the holiday season. He thinks the Oregon Health Authority needs a better yardstick for the damages being suffered by Oregonians, one that includes lost wages, jobs, retirement savings and mental health. "You have to looks at it in its totality.
“We can’t have a second statewide shutdown and expect we’re going to have any type of working economy coming out of this next year,” he said.
Oregon’s unemployment rate was 8% last month, down from 8.5% in August, according to state economists. The recession has hit more vulnerable populations and women more severely. Low-wage workers were most likely to lose their jobs, in part because service jobs in the hotels, bars and restaurants were most immediately impacted by the coronavirus shutdown that began in March.
Those impacts have been most severe on the coast and in Portland. Job losses in southern and eastern Oregon over the past year are roughly half what they have been in the Portland area.
House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, described the governor’s successive emergency orders as arbitrary and heavy handed. She agreed the state’s COVID-19 numbers are alarming, and said it made sense to restrict access to long-term care facilities and limit indoor gathering sizes.
But she said she didn’t understand the overall strategy, or why personal service businesses like salons were shielded from new restrictions while the restaurant sector, which has not been tied to a series of large outbreaks, was facing new restrictions.
“I’m just not sure what the science is behind that,” Drazan said.
She also said the governor’s suggestion that law enforcement could enforce limits on gathering sizes at Thanksgiving or otherwise sounded draconian, and questioned whether Oregonians were being asked to inform on one another.
Drazan attributes the partisan divide over coronavirus restrictions to a philosophical difference in beliefs between individual responsibility and collective obligation.
Sen. Dallas Heard, R-Roseburg, said he’s laser-focused on those differences. He said while he initially wanted Oregon to be cautious and open to new information about the virus, he had lost patience with the governor’s “elitist” attitude in mandating how Oregonians live.
He called Brown’s restrictions on family and religious gatherings “a bold infringement on the citizens of Oregon’s baseline rights.” He maintains the consequences of the restrictions are worse than the virus, citing suicide rates, layoffs, and her administration’s failure to deliver basic services like unemployment benefits. And he says hospital capacity is not an issue in his district, though it may be in Portland.
Sen.s Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, and Dennis Lithnicum, R-Klamath Falls, have sounded similar themes. In a message to constituents earlier this week, Boquist suggested that Brown and the Oregon Health Authority are fear mongering about the virus and implementing “Orwellian business requirements” to maintain control.
“Though Oregon has had one of the lowest mortality rates and infection rates in the country, the state’s leaders are consistently 'doom and gloom’ about the outlook. Why? Because fear and panic gives them more power,” he wrote.
Last month, Linthicum filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court with two other Republicans and a Washington County man alleging that Brown’s emergency orders overreach her constitutional authorities.
It’s not clear how mixed messaging from the governor, health authorities and Republican lawmakers is impacting Oregonians' behaviors, said Jim Moore, a political science professor at Pacific University. Politicians on all sides tend to overestimate their influence. Local public health messaging, and local knowledge, have more credibility, he said.
“When you look at Republican leadership, it’s exactly what we’re seeing in the rest of the country, with masks and shutting down the economy becoming a very partisan issue,” Moore said. “But I don’t see that people are generally ignoring the restrictions. There’s a sense that the general public is worried about health and are generally following these guidelines.”
Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said Friday that the virus is spreading in Oregon communities at alarming rates and does not discriminate who it infects or sends to the hospital.
“COVID-19 does not care who you are, what part of the state you are from, or to which political party you belong,” he said. “The Governor’s decisions around COVID-19 are being guided by the best-available science and data, as well as the advice of doctors and health experts. We are committed to working with Oregon leaders of all parties to implement measures that will help protect Oregonians from this ferocious and deadly disease.”
-- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger