‘It’s all fallen apart’: Newsom scrambles to save California — and his career
The Democrat leading the nation’s biggest state is facing a raging pandemic, vaccine distribution problems and a nascent recall drive.
By DAVID SIDERS and CARLA MARINUCCI
01/11/2021 04:30 AM EST
LOS ANGELES — California is running so low on oxygen that officials are telling emergency crews to conserve supplies. Ambulances in Los Angeles are backed up outside emergency rooms, sometimes for hours. And the coronavirus vaccine distribution remains so disjointed that a freezer failure that forced immediate inoculations of hundreds of people in Northern California — inmates, older people, and some people on the street — was hailed as an improvement.
Californians are frustrated, tired and sick. And in the midst of the unfolding catastrophe, Gov. Gavin Newsom — confronting a burgeoning recall effort, on top of a year of wildfires and civil unrest — is under siege.
“Nobody has been dealt a tougher hand than Gavin Newsom,†Gray Davis, the former California Democratic governor who was recalled in 2003, said in an interview. “Look, I had the energy crisis and a recession. He has a pandemic we haven’t seen for 100 years. He has the fallout from that pandemic, racial injustice, wildfires, and I think I’m leaving something out. But nobody, no living governor, has had to experience as many crises as him.â€
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/11/gavin-newsom-california-scramble-fallen-apart-456665