The Memo: How a GOP governor and a union leader changed their minds on COVID

Two divergent political figures — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten — have one thing in common.

They’ve recently changed their minds.

Hutchinson, a conservative governor in the Deep South, has acknowledged he was wrong to sign a bill that banned school districts from imposing mask mandates.

Weingarten, the head of the liberal American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has said she is open to mandatory vaccinations for teachers, which her union has opposed until now.

Both are candid about their change of heart.

“The facts and circumstances changed my mind,” Hutchinson told this column in a Tuesday morning phone interview. He referred to the rise of the delta variant and his state’s comparatively slow rate of vaccinations as the key factors in shifting his position.

“It was an ill-advised law for those reasons,” he said. “The facts change, and so I have to move with it.”

Weingarten, speaking Monday afternoon, said she became personally more open to the idea of a vaccine mandate in part because of recent travels around the country where she saw the “pernicious” effects of the delta variant — including rising infection rates among children too young to get vaccinated.

At present, vaccinations are available only to Americans 12 years of age and older.

It’s important not to exaggerate the extent of either leader’s shift. Hutchinson remains opposed to a statewide mask mandate. Weingarten stresses that she is speaking about her personal views; union officials will meet throughout this week to discuss whether there will be a policy change on the AFT’s part, she said.

Still, both figures are at least open to having their minds changed. It’s a quality that seems in vanishingly scarce supply in a polarized nation, where public figures often prize dogmatic fierceness over flexibility.

Asked if she believes the current political culture makes it too hard for political leaders to admit they’ve shifted position, Weingarten responded with an emphatic yes.

“If they evolve, then they are going to be called a flip-flopper,” she said. “Sometimes we all mess up. This is what I’m certain of: We all mess up at different times … and sometimes the information is not clear out there.”

She added that, given life’s inherent uncertainties — including how to effectively respond to a once-in-a-century pandemic — it is important to think critically and change course when required.

“But too often the polarization, and social media, makes it really difficult,” she said.

Hutchinson, from the other end of the political spectrum, struck a similar note.

“It’s not just about changing your mind but it is also about applying common sense and compassion to decisionmaking and not just giving into the loudest voices,” he said. “That is as much of a challenge to leadership as is the fact that you’ve got new information and you’ve got to adjust accordingly.

“It is really difficult in this environment when voices are loud to stand firm and say, ‘Good political leadership not only listens but also helps apply common sense to the solutions,’” he added.

An opposition to the loudest voices could be seen as an indirect jab at former President Trump, who elevated political loudness to previously uncharted decibels, or at other Republican governors who have hewed to a harder line on COVID-19.

The two most obvious examples are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Both men have lashed out against what they see as excessive government meddling on the pandemic. Their states are now responsible for roughly one-quarter of all new coronavirus infections in the nation.

DeSantis got into a back and forth with President Biden last week after Biden gave a White House speech urging governors who were not going to “help” tame the pandemic to “at least get out of the way.”

DeSantis responded by reemphasizing his opposition to mandates and saying, regarding Biden, that he did not want to “hear a blip about COVID from you, thank you.”

The Florida governor, who is talked up as a 2024 presidential contender, has also said the U.S. faces a choice between being “a free society” or “a biomedical security state.”

On Monday, DeSantis raised the prospect of the state Board of Education withholding the salaries of district superintendents or school board members who required masks to be worn, in defiance of the governor’s order.

Hutchinson was diplomatic Tuesday when asked about DeSantis and Abbott.

“I presume they are acting on their own convictions and the information they have,” he said. “I am trying to do a good job and responding to needs here. I’m not trying to get into a dispute with other governors.”

Still, in contrast to DeSantis’s spat with Biden, the president called Hutchinson on Monday. According to the White House, Biden “commended Governor Hutchinson on his efforts to get more Arkansans vaccinated” while Hutchinson “thanked the President for his support.”

The kind of flexibility shown by Weingarten and Hutchinson is welcomed by public health experts, who stress how the scientific understanding of COVID-19 has evolved and will continue to do so.

Kavita Patel, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and a practicing physician, expressed concern that the medical community had not adequately conveyed this point.

“What we knew in 2020 was always going to be different from what we knew in 2021, and we failed to communicate this. The public was confused and it ended up looking like we were flip-flopping,” she said. “Public health emergencies are dynamic.”

Patel also lamented the propensity to allow political imperatives to drive health policy — a trend that, she noted, also encompassed Democrats who expressed skepticism about getting the vaccine when it looked as if it might be approved during Trump’s time in office.

“Unfortunately, there is this notion of digging in your heels, and in a pandemic that is fast-moving, that is the wrong posture to have,” she said.

In that regard, the flexibility shown by figures like Weingarten and Hutchinson is a glimmer of light in a politically rather dark time.

Asked about Hutchinson’s position, Weingarten even offered praise.

“I give him a lot of credit for doing that. I give the governor of Alabama [Kay Ivey, another Southern Republican who has emphasized the importance of vaccinations] a lot of credit. I give Sean Hannity and [Senate Republican Leader] Mitch McConnell credit for actually saying we need the vaccines.”

“We have to save lives, we have to protect people, we have to get back to an economy that works and schooling that works,” she added. “I may have a really different ideology, but I think it was important for them to say this.”

As for Hutchinson, he noted with a dry laugh that “you don’t want to be wrong very many times.”

“You ought to be right, and work hard to get all the information at the time you make a decision. But the fact is, sometimes we do err. And we shouldn’t make everybody pay a price for a leader saying, ‘I’m not going to change my position because that would be embarrassing.’”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.