Russell Moore: Raimondo and Snowstorm Politics
Monday, February 02, 2015
In the rush to declare last week's snowstorm the next "Blizzard of 78" before it took place, the prognosticators missed a few vitally important facts about that epic storm. In doing so, it made heroes out of people who deserved no such credit.
None of this is to say that the boots on the ground, the public and private snowplow operators who worked, in some cases, for about 16 hours straight from Monday night until Tuesday evening, don't deserve kudos. As always, much love and credit goes out to those folks who undertake that hard work when the dreaded snow makes landfall.
What I'm referring to is the rush from not only the media, but from what also seems like the general public to crown Governor Gina Raimondo as "The Best Snowstorm Governor Ever". Yes, the Governor did a decent job in her handling of the snowstorm last week. But given the snowstorm's timing, the forecasters hyping of it, and the lower levels of snow than were expected, made the whole process borderline rudimentary.
To understand the point, one must realize what truly made the Blizzard of 78 the destructive force it was. Yes, the Blizzard of 78 It's become obvious at this point that the pundits assign far too much importance to snow amounts and not nearly enough to when the snow takes place.
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The day of the Blizzard of 78, the weather forecast called for "cloudy with a chance of flurries". Instead, the area was hit with snow totals of about 3 inches per hour. Further, the snowstorm took place at the very worst possible time, during the rush hour commute home on that disastrous evening.
In the case of this year's storm, the forecasters predicted more snow to fall than there was. Perhaps even more importantly, the vast majority of the snowfall took place after midnight on Monday, when the vast majority of employees are home sleeping instead of going to or coming home from work.
Both of those factors played heavily into Raimondo's favor. The Governor didn't have to be concerned with a messy commute home, and given the snow forecasts that all but predicted the End Times, virtually nobody other than essential employees like nurses and doctors were being called into work. Those factors left the roads free to for plows to do their thing. None of that stopped Raimondo from displaying large amounts of bravado and tough talk, threatening people who left their homes with arrest. That scored her some political capital from folks, and there are lots of them, who like to feel comfortable under the thumb of an authorative government.
Tough Talk
Let's be honest: a better comparison to the Blizzard of 78 would be "The December Debacle" of 2007. In that snowstorm, the forecasters blew it by miscalculating the time when the snow would hit. They thought it would take place in the evening, but instead struck well before lunch time. It continued right on through the evening commute, which resulted in scores of children left on buses in Providence for 10 hours in some cases, and night time commuters in on route 95 for upwards of 7 hours.
It was that timing, and lack of warning from forecasters (not to mention then-Governor Donald Carcieri's being out of the state when it took place) that led to so much grief for state and Providence City Officials.
In any event where Raimondo capitalized on the opportunity, the administration of the City of Providence inexplicably still managed to mishandle its response to the storm. There were reports of parents of LaSalle High School students needing an hour to get from the school to the highway on Thursday, two days after the storm. Residents from across the city, even including the East Side of Providence where Mayor Jorge Elorza was given the votes that provided the margin of victory in the election, complained about the volume of snow left on the streets even days after the storm.
Woeful Plowing in Providence
I guess Brett Smiley didn't have too much of a "plan" for snow removal. (During his mayoral campaign, Smiley marketed himself as a policy wonk with plans for everything.) Or if he did, it certainly didn't get executed well.
Regardless of the situation in Providence, Raimondo's well-received handling of the storm isn't fully without question. She's received wide-praise for her driving ban, but she could have done more for small businesses on Monday by encouraging people who live near their businesses (say, within a mile or so) to walk to their businesses and open or have nearby employees open for them. Customers who lived within a reasonable walking distance could have taken advantage of the day off to patronize those small businesses.
Rhode Island is, statistically speaking, one of the more densely populated places in the country, so there is no reason not to take advantage of it when possible. Let's face it: those restaurants and small shops that lost their action on Wednesday will have to eat their loss of revenue (pun intended) as they won't be able to get that day back.
In any event, we should be thankful that the storm wasn't the destructive force it could have been. But in looking for someone to thank, we should thanking Mother Nature, not Governor Raimondo, despite her tough talk.
Russell J. Moore has worked on both sides of the desk in Rhode Island media, both for newspapers and on political campaigns. Send him email at [email protected] Follow him on twitter @russmoore713.
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