(The Hill) — The 500-mile-long path of destruction cut by Hurricane Helene has scrambled the politics of three battleground states that could determine control of the White House and Senate: North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris abruptly changed their campaign plans to refocus their attention on states hit hard by a storm that spanned 350 miles, with winds reaching 140 miles per hour, that has left more than 100 confirmed deaths so far.
The storm’s damage has drawn early comparisons to Katrina, the hurricane that killed more than 1,000 people in New Orleans and surrounding Louisiana in 2005 and became an albatross for then-President George W. Bush.
In races that could be decided by a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes, any response that could be perceived as uncaring, tone-deaf or incompetent could be devastating.
“The burden is on President Biden’s shoulders, because his reputation now with many voters is that he’s only marginally up to the job. Anything that seems a bit slow, even if it’s not slow … will have some political fallout for him and those associated with him. So I think the burden is clearly on the shoulder of the Democrats,” said Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
“There’s a tendency to just blame everyone in power if things don’t go as people expect them to,” he added. “I do think that the administration and the Harris campaign are hypersensitive about how things went with Katrina, and they’ll do everything possible to be visible and active in their response.”
President Joe Biden says he’ll visit Western North Carolina, which was hardest hit by the storm, later this week and announced that Congress will need to pass a supplemental funding bill to replenish disaster relief accounts, which lawmakers failed to do before leaving town last week.
Harris, meanwhile, cut short a campaign trip in Nevada on Monday to fly back to Washington and plans to visit the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) headquarters to get updates on the federal disaster response.
The federal government’s response has already become a political football, with Trump claiming during a visit to Valdosta, Ga., that Gov. Brian Kemp (R) couldn’t get in touch with Biden, though Kemp had told reporters earlier Monday that he had already spoken to the president.
The White House issued a state-of-emergency declaration for Georgia, at Kemp’s request, shortly before making landfall.
“He has been calling the president, but has not been able to get him,” Trump said of Kemp during a press conference.
But that claim was knocked down by Kemp, who said he spoke to Biden on Sunday evening. The president asked him, “Hey, what do you need?” Kemp said.
Looming over the political jockeying are the memories of the Bush administration’s botched response to Katrina, which was epitomized by the president’s tin-eared praise of then-FEMA Director Michael D. Brown amid a disorganized federal relief effort.
“What really hurt George Bush in 2005 as we all remember can be put down to one phrase: ‘Heck of a job, Brownie,’” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University, which is not in the part of the state that was significantly hit.
“I’m not even sure how bad or not bad the government response was, but we very quickly developed a narrative that the Bush administration had bungled it,” he said.
“They want to not screw up. They want to show they are taking this sufficiently seriously and avoid any ‘Good job, Brownie’ moments,” Greene said of Biden and Harris.
Before Bush suffered the political fallout from Katrina that hung over his second term, his father, President George H.W. Bush, was harshly criticized for responding too slowly to Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm that slammed into Florida in August of 1992.
Now, Republicans are looking to put Biden and Harris on the defensive, questioning their minute-by-minute movements over the weekend.
“Democrats invented hurricane politics and now Democrats might get burned by it. You’ve got millions without power, you’ve got tens of thousands who’ve lost everything. On the ground, that’s certainly going to weigh on the election results, particularly when you’re talking about Georgia, North Carolina that will be decided by tens of thousands of votes,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist and veteran of presidential campaigns.
Political experts and strategists note that most of the government response will be handled by the governors: two Republicans and one Democrat.
And the good news for Biden and Harris is that all three of them are experienced hands: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who was on the shortlist to be Harris’s running mate; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who challenged Trump for the GOP nomination; and Kemp, whom some Republicans wanted to run for president.
All three leaders have been on top of the federal response and in close coordination with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who’s on the ground in North Carolina.
On a more granular level, strategists are fretting over how the displacement of thousands of voters — both in the Republican-dominated areas of Western Florida, the Florida panhandle and rural Western North Carolina, as well as the Democratic-leaning North Carolina towns of Asheville and Boone in North Carolina — will impact voter turnout.
Christopher Dean, a North Carolina-based political consultant, noted that in-person early voting in his state begins Oct. 17.
“It’s all about turnout and how this is going to affect turnout,” he said, pointing out there are many Democratic voters in Asheville and Boone, the home of Appalachian State University. But he pointed out that surrounding rural areas are strongly Republican.
“Gov. Cooper has done an excellent job of staying on top of it,” he said. “Cooper’s office is always in local news, always talking more, so they’re breaking through more than the federal government.”
On Monday, Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R), who’s in a tough race with former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D), went on offense by demanding Democrats reconvene the Senate to pass disaster relief.
He said Congress should act as soon as FEMA and the Small Business Administration tally up how much federal disaster relief is needed in Florida and other ravaged communities.
“I am today urging Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to immediately reconvene the U.S. Senate when those assessments are completed so that we can pass the clean supplemental disaster funding bill and other disaster relief legislation,” he said.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced last week it would launch a multimillion-dollar TV advertising campaign in Florida in hopes of defeating Scott in a race where abortion politics are looming prominently. Democrats increasingly think that beating Scott in Florida or Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in Texas may be the key to keeping their Senate majority given the tough road to reelection faced by Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D).
Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) responded later in the day by calling for emergency assistance for farmers and ranchers throughout the Southeast.
“I’m focused on ensuring that these farmers and ranchers get the emergency assistance they need to get back on their feet as soon as possible,” she said in a statement.
