From Trump’s GoFundMe to Harris’s travels, the politics of Helene prove tricky

In an election year, it helps to be friendly — but not too friendly — with the other party when disaster strikes

Kamala Harris surveys the damage from Hurricane Helene, in the Meadowbrook neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia (AFP via Getty Images)

Rick Scott is one of the most conservative voices in the Senate. He has tussled with Joe Biden over Social Security and Medicare. A major supporter of Donald Trump, he even traveled to New York during Trump’s criminal trial.

But on Thursday, as Biden touched down in Florida to assess the damage of Hurricane Helene, Scott greeted Biden. And it’s not the only time he’s done so. Last year, after Hurricane Idalia ravaged the state, he did the same — while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was running for president at the time, elected not to meet with Biden at all.

In 2018, as Trump was trashing Puerto Rico in the news and delayed aid to the region following Hurricane Maria, Scott, then a governor running for Senate, chartered flights to the island. His outreach to Puerto Ricans likely played a role in him beating longtime incumbent Democratic senator Bill Nelson by a hair.

Disaster relief puts politicians in strange places because it’s one of the few areas where even die-hard conservatives expect government to carry the load. Even in states like Florida, which has not elected a Democratic governor in 30 years, Republican elected officials live and die knowing they cannot screw up hurricane relief infrastructure.

Indeed, one major reason Governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Andy Beshear of Kentucky — both Democrats — won re-election in red states was because of their focus on providing relief after hurricanes and tornadoes.

On Wednesday, Kamala Harris visited Georgia to survey the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene. She will head to North Carolina on Friday, after a brief campaign stop in Wisconsin.

Both Georgia and North Carolina are battleground states. And unsurprisingly, good disaster relief can often equal good politics. In 2012, Barack Obama won areas in the northeast that he had lost — such as the ardently Republican Staten Island — thanks to his response to Hurricane Sandy.

Republicans have sought to say that the Biden administration is still providing inadequate relief to the victims of Helene. On Wednesday, Matt Gaetz shared a cartoon of Biden avoiding victims of Helene in order to provide aid to Ukraine instead — despite the fact that Gaetz voted against a continuing resolution just last week that would have kept the government open, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Gaetz being a massive hypocrite should surprise nobody. Other members of Congress debased themselves worse.

Nancy Mace, a pro-Trump Republican with as much of a penchant for self-promotion, sent out an email with a subject line suggesting it would concern Helene disaster management — only for the email to actually be about her bill preventing transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming care. Mace also voted against keeping the government open, all while she chastised Harris for a supposedly inadequate response.

The biggest example in modern history of an elected official botching disaster relief is Senator Ted Cruz, who is up for re-election this cycle. His Democratic opponent, Colin Allred, has made it a point to remind people that he ditched Texas for Cancun in 2021 during a historic winter storm. That debacle temporarily earned Cruz the nickname “Flyin’ Ted”, itself a play on the “Lyin’ Ted” moniker given to him by Trump.

It might seem unfair and perhaps even a little tacky that politicians would use such humanitarian disasters to attack one another during an election cycle. But the truth is that, in hyper-polarized times, being too chummy can sometimes backfire. In 2012, Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey famously hugged Obama during the Sandy response, despite him being a major surrogate for Mitt Romney. That paid dividends for Christie, as he overwhelmingly won re-election. But it became an albatross when he tried to run for president.

Both Harris and Donald Trump — whose own contribution to Helene disaster management has been to set up a GoFundMe for the victims — will have to bear that in mind as they navigate this latest catastrophe.