Lori Walsh: Since the first coronavirus cases were documented on US soil, Americans have been looking to China, the Republic of Korea, and Italy for insight into what was ahead and how to manage it here. South Dakotans have had their eyes on New York City, Louisiana, and California as well as places like Sioux Falls and Beetle County. All of these places have different restrictions in efforts to contain the contagion.
Now, Governor Kristi Noem has issued consecutive executive orders outlining instructions for individuals and businesses and municipalities. She's used words like "should" and then "shall", but she's refrained from issuing any kind of state wide stay at home order. One of the challenges leaders face is what they can tell US citizens to do during a public health crisis. Can they close individual businesses preemptively? Can they require at-risk people to stay home? Can they restrict travel across state or city borders? How do they build public trust in order to save lives?
We're going to unpack all that and more today. Lisa Hager is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at South Dakota State University. David Wiltse is Associate Professor of Political Science, also at SDSU, and they've been helping us sort through nuances of national politics from impeachment to the primaries and now to the pandemic. Professor Hagar, welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Lisa Hager: Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh: And professor Wiltsey. Thanks as well.
David Wiltse: Thank you.
Lori Walsh: David, I want to start with you because we know what works in this case. The facts continue to change as new models and we see social distancing put into place and then we see it work. So those facts are changing but they're by and large agreed upon. What we really don't agree upon, it seems, is how to get to what works and how to make those policies so that people do the thing that saves lives. Where do you want to start with this conversation?
David Wiltse: Well, the place that I would generally start for most questions, political like this, is our partisan lens. And I sound like a broken record on this, but the way that we've seen measures taken across the country so far really have ultimately come down to partisanship and the default position that governors are taking in their response. And we're at a point now where I think six or seven states are yet to issue any kind of stay at home order.
Like you said, they're defaulting to, "You shouldn't do this." "It's the wise thing to do." And making appeals toward some kind of collective action on this. But these governors have all been Republican and in the most red of the red states. So, unfortunately in a time where we should probably fall back on to experts and approach this from a technocratic position, we've defaulted to base partisanship.
Lori Walsh: And we see that ideology and in what kind of language that people are using. Is it in what they do or is it in how they talk about what needs to be done?
David Wiltse: Well, it's both. And ultimately it comes down to a willingness to put the emergency measures in place. And if you listen to Governor Noem on this, she defaults to language of individualism, of personal choice, and run of the mill language and rhetoric of Republicans. And if there's any time where we need to distance ourselves from this kind of rhetoric, it's now.
Government is here to solve collective action problems. This is not the kind of problem that we can default to individuals making free choices across the board. We really do need government to step in and issue orders that will restrain people's behavior in this crisis. If you look at California and their response, California got way ahead of every other state and the issue is first at the city level, some very tight shelter in place orders, and then across the state, and they are way below the curve in terms of the spread of this virus.
Lori Walsh: Professor Hager, I want to bring you into this conversation and let's start in the same spot, which is where some of the big picture conversations, the big picture questions and curiosity. The first one being, how does ideology fit into how we solve this problem? What does partisanship look like in this crisis? What would you add to that as some of those big questions to ask as we look at how local leaders are responding?
Lisa Hager: Yeah, I would echo a lot of what Dave just said. I think another key part of this discussion has really fallen under what I would consider state's rights. So the federal government has not issued any sort of blanket policy regarding how States should respond to COVID-19. So they're allowing states to take action under the 10th amendment and do what they is right for their particular states. And what we're seeing right now is that playing out. Many States are instituting those stay at home sorts of orders. Others, like governor Noem and Governor Reynolds in Iowa are taking an approach that uses the language of, "You should stay home. You shall be social distancing." Those sorts of things.
What can she do and what can't she do? Because this is another question, Lisa, I want to start with you. As we look at what's happening, some of those orders in California. We heard President Trump say that he was considering a quarantine of New York and New Jersey and Governor Cuomo pushing back on that a little bit and saying we're not even sure that you can do that. So, at least as a constitutional scholar, some of these limitations that people are running up against have to be legal, constitutional, based on civil liberties. Parse that out a little bit for me, please.
So it's not uncommon for us to see executives at any level, whether it's the president or governors, attempt to infringe on people's civil rights and liberties whenever there is some sort of emergency situation. At the national level, typically where we see this play out, and sometimes even at the state level as well, relates to things like national security.
So, we saw quite a bit of that with respect to responses to 9/11 and whatnot. So, here we have a unique situation where it is a public health crisis. And so I think here you will see governors and the president making those executive orders. And really what you then have as an option is for the legislatures to step in, whether that's Congress or state legislatures, to put law into place that would essentially trump those executive orders, or you are going to see people pursuing their civil rights and liberties through the court system. And that's usually where we've seen the most traction being gained and the bigger checks on executive power in these sorts of situations.
Lori Walsh: So, do you anticipate or have you seen so far people taking those kinds of measures IN places where there have been structured stay at home orders?
Lisa Hager: I have not seen anything. I'll be honest that I haven't actually looked to see if there's been any sort of judicial proceedings taking place. It might still be a little early. I do believe that it tends to be the case where most people are agreeing with these day at home orders. What I've noticed is that there's quite a few people, and this is just anecdotally looking at comments on various tweets and Facebook posts relating to what governors are doing or not, that people would really like to see more stay at home orders being put in place.
Really let's try to nip this COVID-19 in the bud, try to stop the spread, flatten the curve, so that we can eventually go back to normal life. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But I think the longer that these sorts of measures are in place and potentially as they are instituted in areas with lower levels of cases, you could see some court proceedings.
David Wiltse: Yeah. I've not seen any judicial proceedings myself, but I have seen scattered reports, particularly in the Mountain West, of certain groups and individuals who are just openly defying these sorts of orders. And those are the sorts of things that are going to put these judicial questions into play. Ammon Bundy, who was famous for taking over that National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, he and a few of his followers or friends, whatever you want to call them, they're systematically ignoring Idaho's order right now just to force this issue.
But I think Lisa is right for the most part, people default to, "Let's wait for the crisis to abate and then we can have a more detailed discussion about the proper balance between state and federal authorities. What is and is not overreach." After the danger has subsided.
Lori Walsh: One of the things that they are doing in New Zealand is this effort to make it a sharp and short and the pressure largely came from businesses there who said, "The economic impact of doing this for a long time, of closing businesses for a long time to flatten the curve, is devastating to us." And they put pressure on New Zealand government to do it all right now. A month at home. Two 14 day cycles, close the borders, let no one in, and then we'll be open again in a month.
And New Zealand is having a great amount of success with that. David, how difficult though, when you try to take that kind of idea of sharp and short versus long and drawn out or what are the minimal amount of restrictions that we can get into place that we think people can sustain for a long period of time, talk about that a little bit with how drastic would it have to be? Would you have to close the borders in South Dakota? Would you have to close the interstates and the highways? It's hard to get your mind around because it's so different from how we normally live and what we expect to be able to do.
David Wiltse: Right. And a lot of this just boils down to the system of governance that New Zealand has. I'd have to look up to be sure about this, but I'm pretty sure New Zealand has a unitary system where all political power ultimately resides in the national government. Just the federal system here complicates this immensely.
And because certain powers are reserved to the state and certain powers are reserved to the federal government here, doing something like closing an interstate or closing a state border is not something that a governor can just unilaterally do in normal times. And I would certainly default to Lisa on this in terms of the constitutionality of it. But politically, that's not something that governors are willing to do just for the political stake. And that's going to lead to 50 different responses across the country, which is not going to be ideal when it comes to containing the growth of this virus on a national scale. Individual states might be able to do a lot better than others, but we're still going to be behind the curve just because of how we divide political power in this country.
Lori Walsh: Let's talk about leadership and transparency and public trust, because if there are limitations, because one of the things again, Lisa, Governor Noem has talked about is really hinting at this idea of willingness and compliance and sustainability. What are you willing to do for a longer period of time?
And in wondering about some of the pressures that we've seen on the Department of Health to release more information, that they say they're, they're withholding for privacy about where some of these hotspots are, and how their willingness to be open with people, to remain calm, but also to embrace the models as they exist and to have an awareness of what's happening in a state like Minnesota, which is clearly doing a better job right now flattening the curve than South Dakota appears to be doing. Talk a little bit about that, Lisa, if you will, this notion of what's the role of just plain transparency and leadership in this time to encourage and gain trust and encourage compliance and encourage a willingness for people to sacrifice together.
Lisa Hager: Right? So, transparency and trust are going to be key in getting people to actually go along with any sort of stay at home order or just the suggestion that you should be staying home. From what I've been reading, it appears that the Department of Health has really struggled to be able to test people quickly enough and then get that data released in the first place. And so I think that's one issue that South Dakota is having.
I've just seen multiple articles of how many cases there are in each county and then how many cases have then recovered and oftentimes you see those numbers rise together. And so that has been something that people have noticed, that the information is just not getting out very quickly. And so I think then that makes people start to wonder, "Well, if there were people who had COVID-19 and then we're just learning about the test that came back positive, but yet they're already recovered, what were they doing during that time when they were sick or maybe when they were sick and they didn't know it?"
So, I think it does make it somewhat difficult for people to have enough trust in the decisions that are being made. But at the same point, having those sorts of data come out makes people realize we really don't know who is sick or who could be sick or who is sick. And so it is very important to try to follow these stay at home orders or social distancing measures just to try to avoid catching COVID-19.
Lori Walsh: David, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning about partisan lens through which we see government. And Governor Noem talked about, early on and one of the press conferences, was I want to talk to you for a moment about the role of government in a crisis. And then she laid out those beliefs for people, stopped South Dakota state legislature on veto day. You could see the struggles they had with, as all of us do, trying to do their jobs in this whole new way.
But also struggling with what their role was and how to enact it. Was a lot of this just sort of waiting because South Dakota has such a small government? We run on a very small government, a very lean government to begin with. Is a state like South Dakota then less prepared for this and our elected officials are less likely to have really even thought about what, if, this happened because they don't see that that's the role of government at all?
David Wiltse: I wouldn't say they haven't thought about it, but what you say about state capacity I think is absolutely correct. We just don't have the kind of infrastructure that a lot of other states do. And even if we were to have leadership that was willing to aggressively pursue some of the avenues that other states have, I don't know that they could. But I just want to circle back to this whole question about trust and leadership.
Governors have actually been doing fairly well on this. I think most people across the country are defaulting to a rally effect towards governors and there's a few governors, I know Ron DeSantis is in trouble when it comes to overall trust and approval of his handling of this, we haven't seen any polls yet on Governor Noem since we don't do these kinds of statewide polls that often, but we do have a real capacity issue here. So, even if we did have high trust in government, I don't think that state government here is really up to it in terms of their infrastructure, to aggressively take the kinds of measures that is happening just across the border in Minnesota.
Lori Walsh: I want to close before I let you go with a conversation about primaries and elections, and David, this is something you've been following judging from the things you're posting on Twitter, that the governors are making different decisions across the country about how to handle in-person voting. Give us an idea of what that conversation might look like in South Dakota in the days ahead.
David Wiltse: Well, again, what we're talking about, state capacity here, is really going to apply. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the virus is going to peak sometime in May and extend into June, which is what we're looking at in terms of the latest models. That puts our primary smack dab in the middle of this. And again, because we don't have a lot of resources in terms of holding these elections and we don't have the infrastructure in place to quickly convert to a all mail voting system or some such thing, it's going to put real pressure on our Secretary of State's office.
And I hope it's not something like we saw in Wisconsin where we're holding elections with half the number of voting precincts that they had in the previous election, but it is going to put strain on state officials and county and local officials just to pull this election off.
Lori Walsh: Lisa, any final thoughts on elections? Obviously Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential primary yesterday and Joe Biden is trying to figure out how to campaign online. The President's not having the big rallies that he used to have, but he's being accused of using press conferences as a campaign platform. Any final thoughts on how we'll see campaigning shift and change in this time as candidates try to figure out how exactly to get voters' attention?
Lisa Hager: Yeah, no, I think they're definitely going to have to be creative with social media and really anytime that you are able to get in front of the media, show who you are as a candidate. So, obviously President Trump is getting criticized for that, but he's trying to adjust as well and get his point across to people, do you want four more years of me or would you prefer someone else?
So, sneaking those comments in here and there subtly is something that we're probably going to be seeing. Yeah, I think the biggest issue is just going to be seeing what happens with these different primaries and how we're able to actually progress into November. So, I think it's very key that we just monitor what ends up happening with COVID-19 in order to get a better idea of how we're able to move forward as that virus progresses.
Lori Walsh: So, much to talk about now and into the future. We'll let you get back to your schedules, but we appreciate your time. Professor Lisa Hager and David Wiltse, both from the Political Science Department at South Dakota State University. Thanks, guys.
Lisa Hager: Thank you.
David Wiltse: Thanks.