WASHINGTON (AP) — A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year’s presidential election.
The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their recent days to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort.
The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties.
Vice President Harris is trying to use this as an opportunity to project leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at briefings and calling for bipartisan cooperation. Former President Trump is trying to use the moment to attack the administration’s competence and question whether it is withholding help from Republican areas, despite no evidence of such behavior.
Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more money for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would require House Republicans to work with the Democratic administration. Biden said Thursday that lawmakers should address the situation immediately.
“Dealing with back-to-back crises will put FEMA under more scrutiny and, therefore, the Biden administration will be under a microscope in the days leading up to the election,” said Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, who has studied the issue.
“Vice President Harris must empathize with the victims without altering the campaign schedule and provide consistent messaging on the widespread devastation that makes FEMA’s work even more challenging than normal,” Kneeland added.
Already, Trump and Harris have separately gone to Georgia and North Carolina to assess hurricane damage and pledge support, requiring the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and use up time that is a precious resource in the final weeks before any election. Both Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, raising the stakes.
The hurricane fallout is evident in the candidates’ campaign events as well.
On Thursday, the first question Harris got at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas came from a construction worker and undecided voter from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about talk that the administration has not done enough to support people after Helene and whether the people in Milton’s path would have access to aid — a sign that Trump’s messaging is breaking through with some potential voters.
Harris has called out the level of misinformation being circulated by Republicans, but her fuller answer revealed the dynamics at play just a few weeks before an election.
“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said.
On the same day, Trump opened his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising Republican governors in the affected states and blasting the Biden-Harris administration.
“They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said about those affected by Helene in North Carolina.
The storms have also scrambled the voting process in places. North Carolina ‘s State Board of Elections has passed a resolution to help people in the state’s affected counties vote. Florida will allow some counties greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. But a federal judge in Georgia said Thursday the state doesn’t need to reopen voter registration despite the disruptions by Helene.
