So was the focus on New Yorkers a mistake — a needless stigmatization?

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I did it because Rhode Island is so close to New York and I was hearing from my constituents in coastal towns that they were really, really afraid because rental properties were being rented out at a rapid rate by New Yorkers.” Many New Yorkers with means have indeed fled the city for less congested places where coronavirus infection rates are lower — for now.

“Here’s a thing I’ve learned,” she told me. “In uncertain times, there are no easy answers.”

Friends of mine in Rhode Island tell me that the state’s residents, including many who weren’t previously fond of Raimondo, have been impressed with and comforted by her.

They point to the steady flow of unvarnished information that she has provided, to how and when she closed schools and issued social-distancing directives, and to the energy with which she has up rounded up resources for a state that as of this writing had 711 confirmed cases of infected people and 14 deaths. (New York, in contrast, had 92,743 cases and 2,473 deaths.)

They praise her for her manner — sometimes tough, other times tender, almost always candid — at the daily news briefings that she, like Cuomo, holds. They say that she’s more popular than ever.

And while there’s no polling to support or refute that, there’s The Providence Journal Election Panel, a group of more than a dozen ideologically diverse Rhode Island voters who periodically weigh in on events. Asked several days ago to assign grades to Raimondo and Presdient Trump for their handling of the pandemic, most of them gave her an A and him, a C, D or F.

She’s also being validated by novelty clothing. A Providence gift shop named Frog & Toad has sold thousands of T-shirts that say “Knock It Off,” words that she has directed so often at Rhode Islanders who flout her distancing directives that they have become her signature catchphrase.