(CALMATTERS) – On March 6, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent the policy world into a frenzy when, without any notice, he tweeted that “California won’t be doing business with Walgreens,” because of the company’s decision to not distribute an abortion pill in states that banned the medication.
But it turns out that Walgreens won’t lose that much state business after all.
As CalMatters’ Kristen Hwang and Ana Ibarra reported, California had a $54 million contract with Walgreens. There were 600 Walgreens stores in California, making up 10% of the state’s pharmacy market. And it was such a vital prescription provider for Medi-Cal insurers that store locations were listed on the state’s pharmacy directory for enrollees.
In short, California cutting ties with Walgreens would have been a big deal. Indeed, Newsom’s tweet (10.4 million views and counting) stoked both outrage and praise, and generated headlines and op-eds from national news outlets.
But as California Healthline reported Thursday, it appears that the governor’s proposal isn’t going to have as dramatic an impact on Walgreens as initially thought. Walgreens is allowed to rebid on the contract Newsom said the state wouldn’t renew, and California paid Walgreens a total of $1.5 billion last year. It is also “legally bound to continue doing business with Walgreens through the state’s massive Medicaid program.”
Newsom’s move ended up being another example of the governor’s tendency to make big pronouncements that lack important details, but garner a lot of attention. What’s more, Newsom’s senior advisor for communications, Anthony York, said something particularly interesting about the governor’s tweets in general:
- York, to California Healthline: “Tweeting is not policy.”
The comment echoes what spokespeople have said about former President Donald Trump’s behavior on Twitter — specifically, when Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant, said on CNN that Trump’s tweets “are not policy.” (Though the White House press secretary at the time would have disagreed.)
The warnings from Trump’s press aides and allies that the media shouldn’t take the president’s tweets too literally went against the historical precedent that messages from the president are official communication that should be taken seriously.
Lots of politicians regularly communicate to the public directly through social media. In addition to his office Twitter account, Gov. Newsom is active on his personal account, which he created in December 2007 and has since amassed 2 million followers.
It’s unclear what approach Newsom and his staff will take going forward — his office did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But if the governor continues his “panache for sweeping announcements” as California Healthline put it, his national profile will continue to rise as well.