Harris, DeSantis trade barbs as Hurricane Milton bears down

Vice President Harris and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are trading barbs as Hurricane Milton bears down on the Sunshine State and as election-year politics looms over the response to severe weather that has hammered swaths of the East Coast.

Harris called DeSantis “selfish” Monday amid reports the governor refused to take her call after Hurricane Helene hit his state. The governor, a chief foil of the Biden administration, hit back Tuesday, suggesting the vice president was “trying to parachute in” because she’s the Democratic candidate for the White House.

The feud between the two leaders comes as former President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, and as the White House and some Republican officials have had to bat down and clarify misinformation coming from the former president and his allies about recovery efforts.

“One of the sort of challenges we see all the time is the politicization of everything. We certainly saw a lot of that with COVID. … There have been times when things are politicized, and it’s unfortunate because it could cause people to suffer based on that,” said Tim Frazier, director of the emergency and disaster management program at Georgetown University.

“There has been an increase in politicization of emergency management,” he added. “It’s always been somewhat present, but I would say in the last 20 or so years, it’s started to get problematic.”

Harris has taken a more forward-facing role as the White House assists with the response to Hurricane Helene, which battered Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. She reached out to multiple governors in affected states and last week visited Georgia and North Carolina for an update on recovery efforts.

The vice president’s increased visibility comes as she enters the final month of her campaign against Trump for the White House. Polling has shown a neck and neck race in the battleground states likely to decide the winner in November.

DeSantis mentioned the campaign factor during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, suggesting Harris was attempting to “inject herself” into the federal response now that she’s a candidate.

“I’ve worked on these hurricanes under both President Trump and President Biden. Neither of them ever tried to politicize it,” DeSantis, who was a GOP presidential candidate himself last year, told “Fox & Friends.” 

“She has never called on any of the storms we’ve had since she’s been vice president until apparently now, while all of a sudden she is trying to parachute in and inject herself when she’s never shown any interest in the past,” he continued. “We know it’s because of politics. We know it’s because of her campaign.”

Harris, for her part, was asked Monday about reporting that DeSantis was not taking her calls and said: “People are in desperate need of support right now, and playing political games at this moment, in these crisis situations — these are the height of emergency situations — it’s utterly irreconcilable, and it is selfish, and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first.”

DeSantis and Biden spoke over the phone Monday, and the president said he pledged Florida would have whatever it needed from the federal government.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House official-turned-critic of the former president, said on CNN that it was “entirely appropriate” for Harris to be reaching out to officials on the ground.

“I worked for Vice President Pence, and anytime there was a major natural disaster, he would also be calling governors, members of Congress in the areas that were affected. It’s not just the president,” she said.

Hurricane politics is not a new phenomenon. Trump repeatedly sparred with local leaders in Puerto Rico and California in the aftermath of natural disasters. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) faced backlash from his own party for embracing then-President Obama after Hurricane Sandy.

Obama’s visit to the New Jersey shore, where he was photographed walking with Christie, allowed him to highlight his bipartisanship just before Election Day. Obama went on to defeat Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Hurricane Katrina caused lasting political damage to President George W. Bush and Republicans in 2005. While the GOP loss of the House and Senate more than a year later can’t be entirely blamed on perceptions of the Bush administration’s response to the storm, they definitely didn’t help.

The Harris-DeSantis back-and-forth comes with an increasingly bitter subtext.

Democrats have been exasperated by Republicans who have used the back-to-back hurricanes to launch political attacks and spread inaccurate information about the federal response.

Trump has repeated false claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has run out of money for disaster response because it used its funds to provide housing assistance to migrants. Biden administration officials have stressed FEMA has a separate pot of funds specifically for disaster response, and they have said the agency has enough resources to respond to both Helene and Milton.

FEMA debunked a claim amplified by Elon Musk, a Trump supporter and the owner of the social platform X, that the Federal Aviation Administration was restricting airspace and hindering recovery operations.

And Trump claimed on social media last week that there were reports the Biden administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” of the state.

Rep. Chuck Edwards (N.C.), a Republican who represents a district hit by Hurricane Helene, posted a press release Tuesday debunking eight “myths” about the storm response, including multiple claims shared by Trump.

Harris said Tuesday on “The View” that Trump’s claims about FEMA show he “really lacks empathy on a very basic level, to care about the suffering of other people … especially in a time of crisis.”

In a jab at both Trump and DeSantis, Harris said she would continue to reach out to the Florida governor in future times of crisis, despite his criticisms this week.

“When I’m president,” Harris said, “I will continue to call him to see what he needs for help.”