Milton’s October surprise

Hello, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jake Bittle, and today we’re talking about the political impact of Hurricane Milton, the second major storm to strike the United States in the last few weeks.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida, less than 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes were never more than an abstraction to me and my family, despite the storm-preparedness PSAs that aired on television every June. When my family moved there from New England in 2007, it had been close to a century since a large hurricane had hit the stretch of coastline around Tampa.

That reprieve came to an end this year. First, Hurricane Helene delivered a catastrophic storm surge to the barrier islands of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and then Milton brought another dose of surge and wind, plus inland flooding in neighborhoods just miles from where I grew up. The second storm did not wipe out the city of Tampa the way some feared it might — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the day after that “this was not the worst-case scenario” — but even this glancing blow was enough to do billions of dollars of damage to the region.

Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican representing many of the worst-hit areas, won her seat in 2022 on the strength of an endorsement from former president Donald Trump. Since taking office, Luna, an election denier and member of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, has taken what could mildly be called a combative approach to the Biden administration on disaster issues. Not only did she vote last month against additional funding for FEMA’s disaster relief fund, she has also fought the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to loosen its rules for restoring the ever-eroding sand on St. Petersburg beaches; at one point, Luna suggested that the corps “needs to be defunded.”

But that was before the storm, when the federal government was just a bogeyman off in the distance, and catastrophic hurricane damage was as abstract for Luna as it was for me and my family when we lived in Florida. With Milton approaching, Luna changed her tune: She found her district in desperate need of financial assistance and resources from the Biden administration, which has far more money for disaster response than the state of Florida or any local government. As the storm neared landfall, she tweeted a plea to the Biden administration, saying, “We need FEMA DOLLARS FREE’D UP,” and earlier this week, she praised the administration’s response to the hurricane, telling Fox News that Biden called her directly and met with her in person.

“I have obviously been very critical of President Biden in the past, but I will say that him stepping in and taking control of the situation to assist for the right reasons was very honestly kind of shocking for me,” Luna told Fox News, adding that “as far as I am seeing, FEMA has been very helpful … and they’re absolutely going to assist, because President Biden has told them to do so.”

For many politicians, especially conservative ones, criticizing the federal government is as mandatory a daily routine as brushing one’s teeth, and sometimes big disasters can intensify that criticism. We’ve seen that happen with the rush of right-wing conspiracy theories around Hurricane Helene.

The aftermath of Milton is showing another side to the story: For all its bureaucratic slowness and complexity, FEMA is the only entity large enough to serve as a financial backstop for the worst disasters, and as climate change worsens, local and state governments will only rely on it more. Luna seems to have had that realization, however belated. When you’re looking at debris-strewn beaches and flooded apartment complexes, you strike a different tone when talking about the people who can cut you a check.

There’s one more potential reason for Luna’s about-face: She won her seat in 2022 with just 53 percent of the vote, and she’s facing a tough contest this fall against a Democrat who is focused on kitchen-table issues like insurance and housing costs. Last week, Luna’s challenger joined dozens of other Democrats in calling on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to reconvene Congress and pass additional disaster relief funding, and slammed Luna for voting against FEMA money in September. Just hours later, Luna joined the calls for Congress to reconvene, bucking the leadership of her own party.

“This needs to happen,” she tweeted. “Speaker Johnson, call us back.”

Can hurricanes affect voter turnout?

In the past few weeks, millions of people across the Southeast have been affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton. My colleague Zoya spoke to disaster researchers and political scientists to find out whether the hurricanes will suppress voter turnout and ultimately change the course of the presidential election. Here’s what they said:

“We are all wrestling with and trying to predict how it’ll play out in the next couple of weeks. I think a lot of voters have already made up their minds about who they’re going to vote for; there’s not a huge number of swing voters left. A lot of western North Carolina is very Republican. The concern is that if the folks who are unable to make their voices heard in the election are different from the rest of the electorate, then that can skew the election results. The inverse is true in Tampa and Saint Petersburg, which is maybe a little bit bluer than the rest of Florida.”

Kevin Morris Senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program

“The hurricane is likely to have two opposite effects at the same time. Past research has shown that major hurricanes and other large-scale natural hazards depress voter turnout because people are busy repairing homes, struggling to deal with insurance companies, filing paperwork with FEMA or the Small Business Administration, and generally trying to put themselves right again. On the other hand, for many people believing that they should have received more aid from the government, and for those who believe that they received useful aid, they may be more likely to vote to show their feelings.”

Daniel Aldrich Political science professor and disaster researcher at Northeastern University

“The distribution of FEMA disaster assistance in the aftermath of a hurricane tends to help the president’s party in the upcoming elections. Receiving FEMA disaster aid will generally improve turnout among voters affiliated with the president’s party — i.e., registered Democrats in this year’s elections. All else being equal, a precinct that receives more FEMA disaster aid will likely exhibit a slightly higher Democratic vote share in next month’s elections.”

Jowei Chen Associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan

What we’re reading

FEMA faces threats: FEMA relocated some of its response staff in North Carolina over the weekend after receiving reports that armed militias were planning to target federal relief workers, according to Brianna Sacks of The Washington Post. Local law enforcement agencies couldn’t substantiate those rumors, but they did arrest one local man for threatening FEMA and other agencies.
Read more

Hurricanes and EVs don’t mix: The storm surge from hurricanes Helene and Milton revealed a growing risk in states like Florida: electric vehicles, which can catch on fire and explode when salt water inundates their lithium-ion batteries. My colleague Tik Root reports on how firefighters and emergency managers are handling this new threat from a symbol of the climate culture wars.
Read more

Helene’s impact on the grid: Hurricane Helene knocked out power infrastructure across a wide swath of Appalachia, forcing utilities like Duke Energy to confront a difficult reconstruction effort. My Grist colleague Gautama Mehta reported on how utilities might adapt their aging wires and transformers for mounting wind and flood risk.
Read more

Restoring voting access in North Carolina: North Carolina election officials are racing to rebuild election infrastructure in the state’s storm-battered western counties. Governing has a rundown of the notable changes the state legislature has passed, including one tweak that allows more flexibility in where voters can return absentee ballots, and the remaining challenges, which include finding generators that can power battery-operated voting machines.
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Brazil’s post-disaster election: Brazil held a nationwide round of local elections last week after a year marked by historic floods, droughts, and wildfires. But Foreign Policy reports that despite the cascade of disasters the country has faced this year, climate change was, for the most part, absent from candidates’ speeches and policy platforms.
Read more

With reporting and research contributed by Zoya Teirstein.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Milton’s October surprise on Oct 16, 2024.