Wanted for coronavirus questioning: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey
Nov 17, 2020, 12:00 PM | Updated: 2:41 pm
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
Helllllllooooooo! Where’s Doug?
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey isn’t exactly missing – but Arizona’s press corps is missing him. And not in a good way. More like a “how-are-we-supposed-to-write-bad-headlines-about-you-without-your-help?!?” kind of way.
It’s been more than two weeks since Ducey held a press conference to talk about coronavirus — and he stopped holding regularly-scheduled pandemic press conferences a while back.
Does he have something to hide?
No. It’s more like he has nothing new.
In a second, I’ll tell you what I think his reasons are for not hosting a gaggle of reporters. You might not think they’re legitimate reasons — but they’re his.
But first, how we’ve been getting our dose of Ducey (as of late) is very unsatisfying and definitely not sensational enough to scratch a press itching for answers during our COVID surge: YouTube videos.
Scripted, controlled and calm.
And boring.
It has a lot of members of the Fourth Estate missing the good ol’ days: The head of the Arizona National Guard at one end — the head of the state’s health department at the other end — of a giant, socially-distanced table and the governor sitting smack-dab in the middle, facing reporters.
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As much as the press pines for them, those days are probably gone and that brings us to why he’s not busting out the Gubernatorial Podium or putting his press aides to any trouble anytime soon: He has nothing new to announce. He’s not shutting down anything because that’ll just tick off the Arizonans who want the state open — and even if he did close stuff, the people who can’t stand Ducey will still complain because it wasn’t soon enough.
Nothing new = no new press conferences.
Actually, if you watch his latest YouTube, it appears Ducey has nothing new to suggest for us either. When he talks about “…wearing a mask, physically distancing, washing your hands, staying home when you’re sick…” I feel like I’m learning less from his YouTubing than I do from those overhead signs on the freeway telling me to “MASK UP!”
But this dodging by Ducey can only go on for so long. Ducey is the only governor in the country who has not held some form of live coronavirus Q&A in the last two weeks (h/t to Jared Dillingham).
So, I’d like to extend a formal invitation to Gov. Douglas Anthony Ducey Jr. (trying to make it really formal) to appear on Arizona’s Morning News — where we’ve treated him fairly and he knows Jayme West and I won’t ask any “gotcha” questions just to try to make him look bad.
What does he have to lose? All this quarantining from questions is already a bad enough look.
