The struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic is opening a new front in the long-running conflict between blue cities and red states.
Across a wide array of states with Republican governors, many of the largest cities and counties — most of them led by Democrats — are moving aggressively to limit economic and social activity. State officials, meanwhile, are refusing to impose the strictest statewide standards to fight the virus.
A growing chorus of big-city officials in red states like Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Missouri are now urging their governors to establish uniform statewide rules, arguing that refusing to do so undercuts their local initiatives by increasing the risk the disease will cluster in neighboring areas — from which it can easily reinfect their populations.
On Tuesday afternoon, after weeks of complaints from local officials and medical officials, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statewide order restricting social interactions to essential activities (albeit with some conspicuous exceptions).
Robyn Tannehill, the mayor of Oxford, Mississippi (home of the University of Mississippi), told me in an interview that the absence of a statewide rule was undercutting their local efforts to control social interaction.
“As we are a regional health care and shopping destination, we have people coming through from surrounding counties that are not [imposing] a stay at home order,” she said. “When they come here, you don’t know who you are passing in the Kroger or the Walmart. … I think a statewide stay-at-home order is very necessary.”
The Republican governors most resisting statewide action have almost all argued that smaller counties should not face the same restrictions as larger ones. “What may be right for places like the large urban areas may not be right at this particular point in time for the” smaller counties with fewer cases, Abbott said last week before relenting on Tuesday.
While echoing that logic, other GOP governors resisting calls for action from large cities have also cited more ideological arguments. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves last week painted extensive shut-down orders as an expression of overly intrusive government.
“In times such as these, you always have experts who believe they know best for everybody,” he said. “You have some folks who think that government ought to take over everything in times of crisis that they, as government officials, know better than individual citizens.”
Similarly, Missouri’s GOP governor, Mike Parson, argued that rather than government action “it is going to be personal responsibility” that wins the struggle against the virus.
While some Republican governors elsewhere have imposed strict uniform measures, the clash is dividing these states along familiar lines. In almost every state now, including pillars of the Republican coalition such as Texas and Georgia, Democrats have established a dominant position in the largest metropolitan areas. Simultaneously, both in the statewide contests and legislative elections, Republicans have grown increasingly reliant on support from outer suburbs, as well as small town and rural communities.
As the two parties’ geographic bases of support have separated so profoundly, conflicts have grown more common in states where the big cities now tilt toward Democrats but the Republican dominance in small towns and rural communities (combined with continued competitiveness in suburban areas) still gives them the overall edge. The coronavirus is now pushing at that jagged divide, especially because it is now concentrated primarily in the largest population centers.
“It’s just another manifestation of this very terrific polarization, the metros versus the nonmetro areas,” says Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist. “Underlying it is the enormous demographic and economic divisions” between them.
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