Want more information about the coronavirus in Minnesota? Gov. Tim Walz is eager to tell you almost everything he knows about it.
Over and over and over again.
Although he was holed up in the Governor’s Residence for two weeks while under self-quarantine amid the COVID-19 crisis, Walz has been almost a constant presence in the Minnesota news media.
The first-term DFL governor has participated in daily media briefings on the pandemic, which put him on newspaper front pages and the lead story on radio and television newscasts, as well as a hot subject on social media almost every day.
In addition, Walz has addressed the state four times in YouTube videos in recent weeks to announce his stay-at-home order for Minnesotans, make a power-point presentation to launch a new website providing COVID-19 information, deliver a State of the State address and update the public on the latest pandemic data.
While he delivers the news, he is not the big story. The coronavirus is.
As governor, Walz has been thrust into the job of leading the state through a battle like no one has ever seen before. He’s consumed by it.
Why? “A governor’s first responsibility is emergency management,” he said last week.
He spends his days and many nights picking the brains of experts across the state, nation and world to get information about the virus, trying to locate and acquire face masks, personal protection equipment, test supplies, respirators and other material health care providers need to fight the disease and issuing orders to protect public health and safety while trying to limit damage to the state’s economy.
A DAY IN HIS SHOES
Here’s a look at a typical day in Walz’s life:
5:15 a.m. — Wake up and hop on his treadmill. He said he runs 22 miles a week.
8 a.m. — After breakfast, he starts his work day with a phone or video conference call with his staff.
9 a.m. — Phone or video briefings by the state department heads on his COVID-19 team.
Late morning-early afternoon — Phone calls to “major stakeholders” around the state to find out what they need and how they can help combat the pandemic. Last Thursday, for example, he called long-term care providers, Minnesota Rural Electrical Association members, railroad and transit workers, building and construction trade union leaders and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
“I’m not one that loves the phone a lot. I tend to do things in person,” he said in a Pioneer Press phone interview. “But I’ve embraced what the technology team put in so I feel like I’m very much in the loop at all times.”
2 p.m. — Participate in the state Health Department’s daily media conference call where he and his commissioners update reporters on pandemic-related developments and answer questions, often for more than an hour.
Late afternoon — More phone calls. (He takes breaks from his busy schedule to down six cans of Diet Mountain Dew a day.)
5:30 or 6 p.m. — Final daily briefing from his staff and cabinet members.
Early evening — Time with his wife, Gwen, and their teenage children: Hope, a University of Minnesota freshman, and son Gus, a St. Paul Public Schools student.
“We’re spending time as a family again,” Walz said. “We’re all eating supper together at a set time. That hasn’t happened in quite awhile.” If there’s more free time, they read books or play the dice game Yahtzee together.
His day doesn’t always end with his family. Nearly every other night, he said, he gets briefings on his administration’s legislative agenda or future policy plans.
While the Legislature is in recess, the governor said he stays in contact with lawmakers by phone and text messages, most recently preparing for the session scheduled to resume Tuesday. “We’re working out details ahead of time so we have a clear agenda,” he said.
“That to me seems relatively normal, the way they (legislators) are communicating and my policy team is working with them. We’re putting out proposals, finding out what we agree upon, what compromises can be worked out and then planning on how to get them done.”
THE REST OF HIS TIME
Also on Walz’s weekly schedule are conference calls he and the other 49 governors make every Tuesday to President Donald Trump to discuss what the states need from the federal government. After a rocky start, Walz said relations between the governors and the president have improved.
On Wednesdays he gets on another conference call organized by National Governors Association where the governors exchange ideas. As a former National Guard master sergeant, Walz said he often advises them on military issues.
In addition, he calls individual governors almost every day to trade ideas. He said Govs. Jay Inslee of Washington and Larry Hogan of Maryland, states where the pandemic spread earlier and more lethally than in Minnesota, were particularly helpful.
“They’re our future selves a couple of weeks out,” he said. “Sometimes we get a real gift when they say, ‘This is what I would have done differently’ or ‘This is what we did that really worked.’ ”
The governor’s office is swamped with phone calls, letters and email messages from Minnesotans, and his staff responds to as many as they can handle, said Walz press secretary Teddy Tschann.
Walz said the overriding message he’s hearing from constituents and on social media is that “folks are willing to do what’s asked of them. … People are telling us they want more information, ‘We’re big people. We can handle it.’ ”
While the coronavirus consumes most of his time and energy, he said he tries not to neglect his other duties. Last week, for example, he carved out a three-hour block of time to interview judicial applicants and appoint new district court judges.
WHAT HE’S DONE
To slow the spread of COVID-19 in the past month, Walz has used the extraordinary powers granted to governors during crises to close schools and implement “distance learning” for students.
He shuttered bars and restaurants (except for takeouts and deliveries) and shut down theaters, museums, sports arenas, music halls, fitness centers and other public gathering places.
He ordered Minnesotans to “stay at home” as much as possible and stay at least 6 feet away from other people when out in public to avoid spreading the disease. Last week, he extended that order, which had been scheduled to expire Friday, until May 4.
The governor helped provide unemployment benefits to people who lost jobs and paid leave for state workers laid off because of the pandemic. He barred landlords from evicting tenants who can’t pay rent and increased penalties for price gouging.
To help ensure hospital beds are available for COVID-19 victims, he ordered delays in elective surgeries. His administration persuaded Minnesota health plans to waive costs for treating those victims.
As commander in chief, he deployed Minnesota Guard troops to transport and stockpile personal protection equipment for health care workers.
To get all that done, Walz has issued 34 executive orders, which have the force of law without being passed by the Legislature.
But he worked with lawmakers to pass, with strong bipartisan support, more than $500 million in state aid for health care providers, emergency loans for small businesses, funds for child care providers who care for children of medical and other emergency workers and grants to food shelves, homeless shelters, needy veterans and tribal nations.
HOW HAS HE DONE?
Walz’s stay-at-home order and other social distancing guidelines appear to be working. Minnesota’s coronavirus infection rate is among the lowest in the nation, and the growth rate of the infection has slowed.
That has bought more time for hospitals to prepare for a surge in cases. By Saturday, 1,427 Minnesotans had tested positive for the virus and 64 had died.
The governor has leveled with Minnesotans about the bad news: The crisis will get worse. Forecasters predict hospitalizations and deaths will continue to rise, and Walz cites those predictions in warning people to continue staying home and following other social distancing guidelines.
He’s not afraid to admit mistakes and change policies. After refusing for a week to name long-term care facilities where patients contracted COVID-19, he and his commissioners agreed to identify the centers, saying the public’s right to know outweighed the patients’ privacy.
Most people are following his orders, indicating public confidence in his plans. Former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said that public unity isn’t surprising. “Minnesotans tend to pull together in a crisis. We rally around our leaders,” he said.
The first major sign of dissension since the crisis started surfaced Thursday, when Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, the state’s top-ranking Republican official, announced his opposition to Walz’s extension of the stay-at-home order. Gazelka and some other GOP lawmakers have complained that the DFL governor is unnecessarily hurting the state economy by shuttering businesses and sending home workers who could safely return to the job.
Walz responded that he wants the 385,000 Minnesotans who applied for unemployment benefits to go back to work, but he said he wouldn’t lift his restrictions until health experts agree the infection is under control.
Before Gazelka criticized Walz’s stay-home order, the governor appeared to have united bipartisan support — in contrast to the fiercely partisan divide that prevailed before the coronavirus struck.
He still gets high marks from Minnesota’s former Republican governors. “So far, I think Gov. Walz is doing a very good job of leading the state through this crisis,” said Pawlenty, whom Walz consulted for advice.
Former Gov. Arne Carlson said Walz has been “very prudent” so far. The steps he has taken to combat the pandemic “make very good sense. … I think we’ll come out of it all right,” Carlson said.
Former GOP Gov. Al Quie said of Walz, “He’s trying to do his best.”
Walz has also sought advice from former DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, who said his successor is “doing terrifically well. He’s straightforward, he’s made good decisions, and he communicates well.”
House DFL Speaker Melissa Hortman was even more effusive in her praise of Walz. Thanking the governor for his “very strong and very clear leadership” after his State of the State address last week, Hortman said, “I think in some ways he was made for this moment — the teacher in him, the coach in him, the man who has military experience …”
She said Walz, a former high school geography teacher and football coach, has answered Minnesotans’ questions “with the warmth of a coach” and has led his administration to act with “military precision.”
While Republican lawmakers weren’t lavishing that kind of praise on the governor, they were united behind him in the fight against the coronavirus. In a video recorded before Walz’s address, Gazelka said Democrats and Republicans have to face COVID-19 together. “We’re going to do everything we can to help our governor succeed,” he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The rank Gov. Walz held when he retired from the National Guard has been corrected to Master Sergeant. It was incorrect in earlier versions of this story.