By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Residents of Florida were largely spared a devastating blow from Hurricane Idalia this week, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also appeared to avoid the political peril that could have hurt his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
DeSantis and his allies credit his landslide reelection victory last year in part to his response to Hurricane Ian, which killed almost 150 people and caused over $100 billion in damage in Florida. On the campaign trail, he frequently cites the reopening of a major bridge just three days after Ian as proof he is an effective administrator.
DeSantis faced a similar test this week when he suspended his campaign to oversee his state’s response to Hurricane Idalia. By Thursday, the storm had moved past Florida, causing significant property damage but relatively few deaths.
Storms have shaped other political campaigns in the past, and DeSantis’ advisers and donors privately say a successful hurricane response could potentially help the governor close the gap with the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, former President Donald Trump.
Republican strategists said DeSantis has done a good job so far.
“The real work comes post-storm, and seeing what the damage is and how he reacts,” Christian Ziegler, the head of the Florida Republican Party, told Reuters.
“Governors are truly defined in Florida by how they handle storms,” he said.
While it is not yet clear when he will return to the campaign trail, a message sent to supporters on Thursday asked them to donate $35 to “help us kick off getting back on the trail.”
Some social-media accounts affiliated with DeSantis’ presidential bid have pushed out dozens of videos of him addressing the crisis.
In the lead-up to the storm, DeSantis held several press conferences per day, always flanked by a bevy of emergency response officials. He has also spoken to President Joe Biden twice in recent days and he has been outwardly careful to separate the hurricane from presidential politics.
“There’s a time and a place to have political season, but then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life-threatening,” DeSantis said on Monday. “We have responsibility as Americans to come together.”
According to DeSantis’ official schedule, he had seven calls scheduled between 8:30 a.m. and 8:47 a.m. on Wednesday, for instance, with one scheduled to last only one minute.
At one press conference on Wednesday, DeSantis quipped that the toppling of an oak tree near the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee during the storm would allow his children more room to play baseball.
NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET
Ford O’Connell, a Florida Republican strategist, said DeSantis appeared to have acquitted himself well so far.
“Floridians are going to say he did a good job,” he said. “Do I think it’s going to scramble the Republican primary? No.”
While there appear to have been no major management problems so far, DeSantis’ standing could sour quickly if he mismanages the recovery process, which will continue for weeks.
Republicans say Hurricane Katrina, which killed nearly 2,000 people and devastated New Orleans in 2006, contributed to their steep losses in the 2008 congressional and presidential elections.
On the other side, Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott touted his response to 2017’s Hurricane Irma in a successful bid for U.S. Senate the following year. Political strategists also say Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid was boosted by his response to Superstorm Sandy.
The storm arrived as DeSantis was facing blowback after he called the alleged perpetrator of a racially motivated triple homicide in Jacksonville a “scumbag” during a Sunday vigil. Jeffrey Rumlin, a local pastor who spoke after DeSantis, said the alleged killer “was not a scumbag. He was a racist.”
That served as a reminder of previous conflicts with the state’s Black residents. He has faced widespread criticism over a new history curriculum that requires public schools to teach that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, editing by Ross Colvin and Andy Sullivan)
