ATLANTA, Georgia — Vice President Mike Pence continued his lunch tour of states that are reopening on Friday, tucking into a meatloaf and some pulled pork at a restaurant in Georgia, where the governor came under intense fire for allowing dine-in customers to return to restaurants last month.
After a burger in Florida with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, Pence joined Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp at the Star Cafe outside Marietta.
“Meatloaf and pulled pork,” he said with a smile as his full plate arrived. “I couldn’t decide.”
During the worst of the crisis, owner Danny Harrison, whose family has operated a diner for 70 years, said he had been forced to send half his staff of six home as he concentrated on takeout. A Payroll Protection Program loan eased the pain, but he said he was grateful to have been able to open.
Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, has resumed a busy schedule in recent weeks with trips designed to highlight the best practices for reopening safely and to show the flag in November battlegrounds.
“In a very real sense, I think history will record that Georgia helped lead the way back to a prosperous American economy,” Pence said after lunch.
His appearance is a public seal of approval at a time when many remain fearful of entering restaurants or other communal spaces. Officials said the reopening of America must be a “bottom-up,” not a “top-down” process and that lifting social distancing restrictions will not be sufficient by itself to rebuild the economy. The public has to want to reopen businesses and to go back to work.
“Gov. Brian Kemp has proven them wrong every day,” he said. “The people of Georgia have proven them wrong every day.”
The vice president’s chief of staff said the lunch stops were an important message that America was safely getting back to business.
“It’s an important visual the rest of the country needs to see,” he said.
The restaurant had taken a number of obvious social distancing steps. Alternate booths stood empty, and free-standing tables had been thinned out. And although diners were mask-free, servers had their faces covered.
The lunch came a month after the state’s aggressive reopening strategy sparked waves of criticism.
Hair salons, gyms, barbershops, and tattoo parlors were allowed to resume business on April 24 while much of the rest of the country remained under strict lockdown. Movie theaters and dine-in restaurants followed days later, reflecting the governor’s avowedly pro-business agenda.
Writing in the New York Times, Keren Landman, a physician and journalist based in Atlanta, said the governor was using his state as the nation’s “canary in this particularly terrifying coal mine.”
The Atlantic headlined a story: “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”
Even Trump, who has frequently called for faster progress, expressed his concern. “I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp, not at all happy,” he said during a White House briefing, using the governor’s full name as if to emphasize his irritation that the state was moving more rapidly than his federal guidelines allowed.
But a surge in fresh infections has not materialized. A seven-day rolling average of new cases suggested the crisis is declining steadily from 835 the day before hair salons and gyms opened to 633 on the eve of Pence’s visit.
Even so, small, localized outbreaks have caused problems. Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle in Ringgold resumed services on April 26 but had to close again after several families in the congregation tested positive for the virus despite social distance measures.
For his part, Kemp said he had taken no notice of the critics.
“I’m not too worried about critics that are out there,” he told reporters. “I’m making decisions on science and public health advice.”
