Alabama’s top two constitutional officers continue to be on the opposite side of the public health vs. economy debate when it comes to administering the policies for fighting coronavirus.
Within the past month, they’ve almost completely flipped in their respective positions.
Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, who less than a month ago was urging a more aggressive public health response, is now pushing for an almost immediate reopening of restaurants and small businesses. A small business emergency task force he has been leading, on Friday, issued a detailed report that outlined how Alabama’s restaurants, retail stores, beaches, youth athletics and other attractions should reopen. Since then, Ainsworth, the 39-year-old Republican from Guntersville, has taken to Twitter to push for Alabama to reopen in a safe and responsible manner.
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, on Tuesday, did not hint at a reopening date after expressing concerns over a lack of COVID-19 testing. Late last month, the 75-year-old chief executive expressed concerns about closing down the economy while governors in other states were aggressively doing so.
“This is another odd chapter in the Ainsworth/Ivey dynamic, with the two again taking different sides over the coronavirus issue,” said Robert Blanton, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Some of the divergence here may simply reflect the role in which Ivey placed with Ainsworth, specifically in heading a task force on reopening the state as well as where each of them are getting their advice and information – Ainsworth’s task force has no public health officials whereas Ivey has apparently been consulting with such officials.”
Said Brent Buchanan, a Republican political pollster based in Montgomery, “There are a lot of differences between Governor Ivey and Lt. Governor Ainsworth – political experience, generation, style, among other things. What makes great decisions is multiple opinions. Look at President (Abraham) Lincoln’s ‘Team of Rivals.’”
Ivey and an executive committee she formed to analyze the virus are examining ways to reopen Alabama’s economy ahead of the expiration of a “stay at home” order she authorized on April 3. The order ends in one week.
“This week, we are in the projected peak of the virus, and these next few days are going to be critical as we evaluate us safely reopening the economy,” said Gina Maiola, spokeswoman for the governor. “Governor Ivey values the input from our congressional delegation, the Small Business Commission and private citizens alike, which is why she is taking this team effort approach. She is more eager than anyone to get the economy running on all cylinders again, and she and the Executive Committee are already reviewing all the data, information and recommendations so that we can soon make this a reality.”
Flipping roles
Ainsworth isn’t directly throwing criticism at the governor right now, though he’s joining the drumbeat from other GOP leaders in pushing for businesses to reopen immediately or by May 1. Ivey has since thanked him for the work he’s done in overseeing the task force and for the recommendations they produced.
An Ainsworth spokesman did not respond for a request for comment.
The mood and position from the two constitutional officers is different than it was than 30 days. Late last month, Ivey criticized Ainsworth during a March 28 news conference for “raising challenges” and “criticism” while not offering up solutions or not showing willingness to work with her task force.
At that time, Ainsworth – armed with alarming projections about a coronavirus surge – argued in support for taking immediate public health action to prevent the spread of coronavirus. He wrote a letter to Ivey’s task force on March 25 that accused them for not taking a “realistic approach” about a looming “tsunami of hospital patients.” He said his letter was “intended to be a call to arms.”
The letter was written after Ivey, during a news conference the previous day, said the state needed to balance public health with the economy even as governors throughout the U.S. and the South were formulating strict “stay at home” orders.
An influx of hospital patients, however, has not materialized while much of the state’s residents have remained home and obeyed strict social distancing guidelines.
Ainsworth, on Twitter Wednesday, posted that Alabama is headed in a downward trend with new coronavirus cases and qualifies to reopen businesses under the White House’s guidelines for reopening the country’s economy.
Maiola, Ivey’s spokeswoman, said the “stay at home order” will remain in effect to April 30.
Ivey, on Tuesday, said she believed the president’s 14-day benchmark of declining new cases is a “good benchmark." Harris said he didn’t believe that Alabama was at that 14-day mark. Other Republican governors who have opened their economies before the 14-day benchmark, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, have drawn the president’s ire.
Meanwhile, testing continues to be a concern in Alabama as Ivey acknowledged on Tuesday. The Alabama Department of Public Health reports that 52,641 Alabamians, or 1.1% of the overall population, has been tested for COVID-19. By comparison, Alabama trails neighboring Mississippi where 53,389 total tests have occurred, representing 1.8% of the overall population.
State Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Daphne, and a member of the Ainsworth task force, said that it’s not just Ainsworth who’s pushing for the economy to reopen, but also congressmen like U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne and others who have sent recommendations urging for similar action.
Raising profile
Jess Brown, a retired professor of political science at Athens State University and a long-time observer of state politics, said he believes that Ainsworth’s task force, which was headed up by Republican State Rep. Danny Garrett of Trussville, came across as “substantive” and focused on embracing small businesses in Alabama.
The task force’s recommendation called for immediate reopening of restaurants, hair salons, childcare centers and small retail stores, as long as safe social distancing guidelines were in effect.
“If think if you’re a cosmetologist or you run a small sporting goods store and you look at those recommendations from the lieutenant governor, you see a public official trying to create equity between large and small retailers,” said Brown. “But you also see a public official who is trying to impose on businesses, both large and small, some social responsibility in the maintenance of public health.”
Brown said compared to any other state elected office holder in Alabama, Ainsworth has raised his public profile the most during the pandemic.
In Alabama, the lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor. The two do not share their political party’s ticket together during the primary or general elections. Seventeen states elect the lieutenant governor separate from the governor.
Ainsworth became lieutenant governor in 2018, after serving four years in the Alabama House of Representatives.
“Ainsworth has done more to raise his name recognition using this issue more than all of the other secondary state executive officials,” said Brown. “If you’re a lieutenant governor or a secondary state executive and you want to be governor or a U.S. Senator in the future, you have to raise your profile. He’s done that effectively.”