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Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said it was a “cowardly act” for Republican officials to flout his virus stay-at-home orders. But conservatives see rising anger that could lift turnout in November.
It was a stunning rebuke by a governor.
As resistance to lockdown orders flares around the country, often with a partisan overtone, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, reached for a military metaphor to accuse Republican officials of desertion in the battle against the pandemic.
“To those politicians who decide to cave in to this coronavirus,” Mr. Wolf said on Monday, addressing county lawmakers who have defied his stay-at-home directives, “they need to understand the consequences of their cowardly act.”
The normally mild-mannered governor’s comments turned up the temperature of a national debate over the health emergency, one fanned by President Trump as he eggs on protesters at state capitols, including in Harrisburg, and by lawmakers in Congress, where the government’s top health officials warned this week of dire consequences if the economy reopens too soon.
On Thursday, the president visited Pennsylvania, one of several battleground states crucial to his re-election, where the political combat over limiting the virus’s death toll or easing its economic devastation could have weighty consequences in November. While 26 percent of the state’s work force has filed for unemployment, the governor is relying on metrics about the virus’s spread to keep many people in their homes and all but “life-sustaining” businesses in populous regions closed.
“We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening up a little bit,” Mr. Trump said after a tour of a distribution center for masks and other medical supplies. “You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected and they want to keep them closed. Can’t do that.”
Republicans, sensing a gut-level anger in exurban and rural areas after nearly two months of restrictions, see an issue with the potential to drive turnout by voters in a state where Mr. Trump, as elsewhere in the industrial and Midwest region, needs a surge of support to repeat his narrow victory of 2016. In Wisconsin, also a swing state, the State Supreme Court sided with Republicans on Wednesday and threw out the stay-at-home order of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. In Texas, armed men have shown up to support businesses defying government orders to stay closed, an extreme sign of the politicizing of social distancing rules.
At the same time, polls show that Mr. Wolf, like other governors moving cautiously and heeding scientific benchmarks to reopen, is enjoying record support, including among many Republicans.
The governor’s accusation of cowardice was directed at officials in half a dozen Republican-led counties that have said they would defy his timeline for reopening businesses. Mr. Wolf has partly lifted restrictions on 37 counties, mainly in rural regions where community spread of the virus is more easily contained.
But with the rest of the state, including its populous southeast, still under a strict stay-at-home order through June 4, officials in some counties said they would ignore the governor and open up starting Friday.
“The health crisis is real, but the economic devastation is real also,” said Josh Parsons, a commissioner of Lancaster County, one of those moving to loosen restrictions despite not meeting all of the governor’s health benchmarks.
He described “chaos on the ground” as people openly disregarded stay-at-home orders in recent weeks. “People have been voting with their feet and going back to work because they have to,” he said.
Some Republican strategists said the issue of reopening Pennsylvania would add motivation to turn out for Mr. Trump against the Democratic Party in November.
“I’ve sensed a very, very strong backlash in, quote, the hinterlands,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Trump narrowly carried Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes in 2016. To compensate for population growth and rising anger at his presidency in the Philadelphia suburbs, which lifted Democrats in recent elections, he needs higher support among white men, with and without college degrees.
“My sense is there is a significant number of voters who did not vote in 2016 for whatever reasons who will be voting for President Trump in 2020, and part of it is this overreach by Governor Wolf,” Mr. Gerow said.
At the moment, however, polling has shown that far more Pennsylvanians approve of Mr. Wolf’s handling of the coronavirus than they do of Mr. Trump’s.
A survey released this week by The Washington Post/Ipsos showed that 72 percent of Pennsylvania adults approved of how the governor has handled the coronavirus outbreak, including 51 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Only 45 percent of all adults in the state supported Mr. Trump’s handling of the outbreak.
In addition, seven in 10 Pennsylvanians said the United States should keep trying to slow the virus’s spread even if it means keeping businesses closed. Nearly half of Republicans agreed.
“I’m baffled by what the Republican game plan is here,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “I guess they think this will rally their base, but it seems to speak to a narrow base that is already riled up, while alienating them from the kinds of voters they need to carry Pennsylvania.”
In Lancaster County, as well as others that have moved to reopen despite the governor’s orders, the rate of new coronavirus cases remains higher than 50 per 100,000 people over the previous two weeks, a target Mr. Wolf’s administration set for moving counties to a “yellow” phase of partial reopening. Lancaster County also has one of the highest death tolls in the state, with 183 as of Thursday.
Other counties where Republican officials vowed late last week to defy the governor include Dauphin, Franklin, Lebanon, Berks and Schuylkill, roughly the region from the Philadelphia exurbs west to Harrisburg. Some county sheriffs and district attorneys said they would not pursue businesses that opened despite the governor’s orders. On Wednesday, after Mr. Wolf warned that defiant counties would face consequences, Dauphin County’s commissioners backed down and said they would not unilaterally move to yellow status.
Mr. Parsons, the Lancaster County commissioner, and other local Republican officials argue that the county has met more important metrics for reopening than the growth of new virus cases, including the availability of intensive-care beds and ventilators in hospitals. Deaths are high because the county has many nursing homes, he said.
“We need to protect those people in nursing homes, but that doesn’t mean some people can’t safely and prudently go back to work,” Mr. Parsons said.
On Monday, Mr. Wolf threatened to withhold federal coronavirus relief money from counties that disobeyed him and reopened early.
He also told business owners who reopened too early that they risked losing certificates of occupancy, liquor licenses and insurance. “Insurance does not cover things that happen to businesses breaking the law,” he warned.
The State Senate’s Republican majority leader, Jake Corman, said the governor’s threats were “not worthy of his office.”
“He is, rightly or wrongly, completely focused on the health end of things,” Mr. Corman added. “He’s not focused on what carnage the stay-at-home order is causing.”
Unemployment in the state is 1.7 million, small businesses are in danger of never reopening, and there are fears of rising alcoholism and domestic violence.
Mr. Trump’s visit on Thursday brought him to a business outside Allentown, his 18th trip to Pennsylvania since taking office, according to The Morning Call in Allentown.
The region, the Lehigh Valley, was traditionally a Democratic stronghold, but Mr. Trump made inroads there in 2016 while becoming the first Republican to carry Pennsylvania in 28 years.
Since then, Democrats have won major victories in the state, including flipping the congressional seat representing the Lehigh Valley in 2018, when Mr. Wolf won re-election against a Trump-like opponent. And last year, Democrats stormed through county elections in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Republican once dominated.
At the same time, at the opposite end of the state, Republicans advanced in blue-collar union counties outside Pittsburgh, where Democrats hold an advantage in registered voters.
Analysts expect Mr. Trump to return to Pennsylvania so often before November that he may claim native status as much as Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, who was born in Scranton.
