Hurricane Helene and Milton have surged into this year’s presidential race. The two disasters have disrupted the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom have spent recent days answering questions about the storm recovery effort.
The two hurricanes have raised fundamental issues about who as president would best respond to fatal natural catastrophes, a previously neglected issue that has become an increasingly normal element of the job.
And, just weeks before the November 5 election, storms have hampered voting procedures in numerous important areas. Vice President Harris is attempting to project leadership by attending briefings alongside President Joe Biden and advocating for bipartisan cooperation.
Former President Trump is attempting to exploit the opportunity to criticize the administration’s performance and wonder whether it is withholding aid from Republican areas, despite the lack of proof of such behavior.
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The need to increase funding for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would put additional pressure on House Republicans to collaborate with the Democratic administration. On Thursday, Biden stated that lawmakers should address the matter immediately.
A professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, Timothy Kneeland said, “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.
“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.”
Trump and Harris have already gone to Georgia to examine hurricane damage and vow support, and Harris has visited North Carolina, forcing the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and waste time, which is a valuable resource in the last weeks before an election.
Both Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, which raises the stakes. The hurricane’s aftermath is visible in the candidates’ campaign activities as well.
Harris has criticized the quantity of misinformation spread by Republicans, but her broader response exposed the dynamics at work only weeks before an election.
“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she told the audience.
On the same day, Trump began his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by commending Republican governors in the afflicted states and criticizing 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 disrupted the voting process in certain regions. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has enacted a resolution to assist residents of the affected counties in voting.
Florida will give some counties more leeway in distributing mail-in votes and modifying polling locations for in-person voting. Despite the interruptions caused by Helene, a federal judge in Georgia ruled on Thursday that the state did not need to reopen voter registration.
Tension and controversy have begun to overshadow the catastrophe response, with Biden claiming on Wednesday and Thursday that Trump has promoted falsehoods that are “un-American.”
Candace Bright Hall-Wurst, a sociology professor at East Tennessee State University, believes that natural catastrophes have become increasingly politicized, with politicians receiving more attention than those in need.
She said, “Disasters are politicized when they have political value to the candidate. This does not mean that the politicization is beneficial to victims.”
As the Democratic nominee, Harris has suddenly become an important element of the hurricane Helene and Milton response, a role that vice presidents have not generally played in previous administrations.
She attended a Situation Room briefing on Milton remotely on Thursday while in Nevada for campaign activities. She has had meetings to discuss reaction preparations and spoke with CNN live on Wednesday about the administration’s efforts.
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