Campaign politics collides with disaster response as Trump visits storm-battered Georgia

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Hurricane Helene’s deadly march across Georgia has quickly emerged as a campaign issue, as former President Donald Trump accused Vice President Kamala Harris of neglecting storm-stricken areas amid his own tour of hard-hit Valdosta.

Trump’s attacks stood in stark contrast to the stances of Georgia leaders from both parties who steered clear of politics during visits to devastated areas and focused instead on the response to a storm that killed at least 25 in Georgia and more than 100 across the region.

Moments after he landed in Valdosta, Trump praised Gov. Brian Kemp’s actions but falsely accused President Joe Biden of being “very nonresponsive” to the Republican governor’s calls.

The governor said at a separate stop in Augusta that he spoke with Biden on Sunday evening and that he appreciated the “bipartisan way” that local, state and federal leaders worked together to respond to the crisis.

“He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, we got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process,” Kemp said of his conversation with Biden. “He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which I appreciate.”

The former president also accused Biden of “sleeping” through the crisis and slammed Harris for holding fundraisers in California after the storm hit. (Harris went straight to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees federal recovery efforts from disasters, after landing Monday in Washington.)

Trump, too, spent the weekend on the campaign trail: He held events in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the weekend, and he stopped in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to watch part of the Georgia-Alabama game from a luxury suite.

The White House said that both Harris and Biden will visit communities affected by Helene “as soon as it will not disrupt emergency response operations.”

“I’ve been told that it’d be disruptive if I did it right now,” Biden said Monday. “We will not do that at the risk of diverting or delaying any of the response assets needed to deal with this crisis.”

And Biden’s aides rejected Trump’s attempts to portray them as asleep at the wheel.

Tom Perez, a senior Biden adviser who runs the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, said the president and vice president “aren’t going to play politics with a catastrophic emergency like this.”

“We’re very proud of what we’ll continue to do. It doesn’t matter where a disaster occurs. These are our neighbors and we’ll help them,” he said in an interview, adding: “Disasters are never moments to play politics. Period.”

‘None of that matters’

The collision between disaster recovery efforts and campaign trail politicking comes at a crucial moment in the presidential race. Trump’s campaign views Georgia as a must-win state, and polls show he’s locked in a tight race with Harris.

It also brought sharp concerns from some local officials who worried that Trump’s visit could delay their efforts to repair damage, as well as criticism that he transformed a seemingly nonpartisan issue — disaster relief — into a campaign trail attack.

“Local officials shouldn’t have the burden of trying to execute recovery efforts while also catering to a presidential campaign that only wants photo opportunities,” Democratic state Sen. Jason Esteves of Atlanta said.

Others emphasized consensus-driven efforts. Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff met Saturday with about a dozen officials at the rural airport in Cook County, a heavily Republican area in South Georgia that was in the middle of Helene’s wrath.

Cook County Probate Judge Chase Daughtrey, who took part in Ossoff’s meeting, praised the Democrat for promising to work with state and federal authorities to free up the federal spigots.

“The beautiful thing about Georgia,” Daughtrey said, “is when it comes to issues that directly impact Georgians from this hurricane, every elected official involved — Democrat and Republican — they are showing their allegiance is to their people and not their party.”

Trump’s visit also underscored ongoing worries about a repeat of the long struggle to rebuild after Hurricane Michael, which ravaged South Georgia in October 2018.

The grueling fight for federal aid divided Georgia Republicans and put Kemp at odds with Trump. It took nearly a year of legislative wrangling to clear the way for the aid and longer still for it to trickle down to farmers.

U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, was in the middle of that fight, emerging as a vocal critic of both parties as the gridlock deepened. On Monday, he sounded hopeful that Trump’s arrival was a sign another fight could be avoided.

“You know, ultimately, Donald Trump cares. He’s here,” Scott said in an interview. “People need to know that people at the highest levels of our government care and they get to see it.”

And in a rare move, the entire Georgia congressional delegation urged Biden to swiftly approve Kemp’s request for an expedited disaster declaration for roughly 90 storm-damaged counties. It is expected to soon be granted, Perez said in the interview.

“I’m confident that it will be processed very, very quickly,” he said. “We’re talking hours, not days.”

Trump, for his part, was welcomed by hundreds in Valdosta who greeted his arrival with “USA” chants. Shortly after he criticized Harris at Valdosta’s airport, he stood in front of a crumbling building flanked by his GOP allies and delivered a different message.

“Our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election, but in a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters,” he said. “We’re not talking about politics now. We have to all get together and get this solved.”

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(Staff writers Michelle Baruchman in Augusta and Tia Mitchell in Washington contributed to this article.)

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