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On Wednesday, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, argued in a Times Op-Ed that too much attention is being paid to how the president is handling the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, people should be focusing on their governors: “Some are showing their competence and leadership, while others are revealing their shortcomings,” she wrote.

Ms. Haley was not so impolitic as to name names, but plenty of other people have. Which governors are leading the response to the coronavirus, and which ones are trailing the pack? Here’s what journalists, public-health experts and others are saying.

Who took the lead

Gavin Newsom (Democrat, California)

Mr. Newsom was the first governor in the nation to issue a stay-at-home order, which may have helped California avoid a New York-level outbreak, according to The Los Angeles Times. His “bold, early pushes for social distancing appear to have paid off immensely,” Farhad Manjoo, a New York Times columnist, writes. “The Bay Area, where I live, reported some of the first ‘community spread’ coronavirus cases in the country. Now the region is leading the nation in ‘flattening the curve.’” Most recently, Mr. Newsom has earned praise for reportedly securing a monthly supply of 200 million N95 respiratory and surgical masks, some of which California may export to other hard-hit states.