Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ‘ office said Friday that he has “no plans” to meet with President Joe Biden when the Democrat flies to Florida this weekend to survey damage from Hurricane Idalia, suggesting that doing so could hinder disaster response.
“In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said in a statement.
Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning along Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 3 storm, causing widespread flooding and damage before moving north to drench Georgia and the Carolinas. Biden is set to fly to Florida on Saturday to tour the damage personally.
DeSantis preemptively heading off a meeting contradicts Biden himself, who, when asked after an event at the White House earlier Friday whether he would meet with DeSantis during his trip to Florida, replied, “Yes.”
It’s also a break from the recent past, since Biden and DeSantis met when the president toured Florida after Hurricane Ian hit the state last year, and following the Surfside condo collapse in Miami Beach in summer 2021. But DeSantis is now running for president, and he only left the Republican primary trail last week with Idalia barreling toward his state.
White House spokeswoman Emilie Simons responded, “President Biden and the first lady look forward to meeting members of the community impacted by Hurricane Idalia and surveying impacts of the storm.”
“Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination” with the Federal Emergency Management Agency “as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations,” Simons said in her own statement.
The politics of putting aside rivalries following natural disasters can indeed be tricky.
Another 2024 presidential candidate, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, was widely criticized in GOP circles for embracing then-President Barack Obama during a tour of damage 2012’s Hurricane Sandy did to his state. Christie was even asked about the incident last month, during the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee.
Both Biden and DeSantis at first said helping storm victims would outweigh politics, but DeSantis began suggesting that logistical problems could complicate a presidential visit as the week wore on.
“There’s a time and a place to have political season,” the governor said before Idalia made landfall. “But then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life threatening, this is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, it could cost them their livelihood.”
