Hurricane Helene’s trail of destruction across the US southeast presented Donald Trump and Kamala Harris with a crucial political test just five weeks before Election Day, altering campaign plans and dragging politics into the response to the powerful storm.
Trump traveled to Georgia, one of the states hit hard by the hurricane and a key battleground that will determine November’s outcome, while Harris cut short a western campaign swing to return early to Washington for a briefing at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
With more than 100 people dead and hundreds unaccounted for the natural disaster striking the US southeast — including two swing states — comes during an already razor-tight presidential election. Even as floodwaters recede, the region is gripped by power outages, mudslides and supply shortages.
As of Monday morning, AccuWeather Inc. had estimated the total damage and economic loss from Helene may be as high as $160 billion — sharply up from forecasts last week — and losses which would make it one of the nation’s top five most costly storms ever.
Monday saw both Trump and Harris seeking to signal that their attention was squarely focused on the storm and recovery efforts.
Trump in Valdosta, Georgia, offered residents the help of one of his most prominent backers, Elon Musk, saying he had asked the billionaire to use his Starlink service to help restore communications.
“We want to get Starlink hooked up, because they have no communication whatsoever,” Trump said about communities in the wake of Helene’s devastation. “Elon will always come through.”
Starlink is SpaceX’s massive internet-from-space initiative, consisting of more than 6,000 satellites in orbit that beam broadband coverage to Earth.
But Biden administration officials said they had already moved to use Starlink to connect communities, with Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall telling reporters during a briefing Monday that FEMA will install 30 Starlink receivers that day in North Carolina, another storm-ravaged state that is also a 2024 battleground.
Harris for her part flew cross-country from Nevada. In Washington, she headed to FEMA headquarters. Harris said she had received regular briefings and spoken with both Governors Brian Kemp, a Republican from Georgia, and Roy Cooper, a Democrat from North Carolina.
“We will do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover. And I’ve shared with them that I plan to be on the ground, as soon as possible,” Harris said, saying she did not want to disrupt recovery efforts.
Citigroup economists led by Andrew Hollenhorst in a note to clients Monday said the storm, along with a potential strike from dockworkers at ports on the East and Gulf coasts, offers a “double disruption” that “may cloud underlying economic trends.”
Continuing power outages and flooding threaten to lead to a drop in production and consumption. But since the hurricane struck at the end of a month and quarter, it is unclear the extent to which it will impact economic data as activity rebounds.
Trump had castigated Harris and President Joe Biden over the weekend, faulting the sitting president for being at his Rehoboth Beach home in Delaware and his general-election opponent for continuing on a west coast campaign swing as the storm battered communities in states including Florida, Georgia and North Carolina.
Biden, speaking from the White House, sought to assure the public the administration is marshaling the full resources of the federal government, saying they would be there “as long as it takes.”
“I’ve directed my team to provide every, every available resource as fast as possible to your communities,” Biden said, noting that he has approved emergency declarations in seven states and disaster declarations in three of them.
The president said he expected to seek supplemental funding from Congress, and could even request lawmakers return from their pre-election recess to Washington.
Biden told reporters he would visit North Carolina on Wednesday. He also reacted angrily to criticism from Trump, including the former president’s claims that Kemp could not reach Biden, when in fact they had spoken the previous day.
“He is lying,” Biden said. “It’s irresponsible.”
The president also bristled at a question about criticisms of him spending the weekend in Delaware while the storm battered communities in the southeast.
“Come on. Stop playing that game. It’s 90 miles from here,” Biden said. “If I sound frustrated, I am.”
How presidents and candidates respond to such natural disasters can be pivotal in shaping voter perceptions of their effectiveness in office and their empathy. In 2012, then-President Barack Obama earned plaudits for his embrace of then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, after Hurricane Sandy battered the Northeastern seaboard shortly before that year’s election.
Trump drew criticism in office over his administration’s handling of the response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated swathes of Puerto Rico. The then-president clashed with the island’s leaders. And when he visited San Juan after the storm, he famously threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd — a move critics cast as callous but which Trump has defended.
Biden has long held a reputation as an empathetic president eager to comfort victims of disasters and visit impacted communities, but that image was undercut by the wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2023 – with local residents faulting the response of state and federal officials.
That criticism was fueled by the president telling reporters “no comment” when he was asked about deaths from the wildfires while on vacation in Delaware. Biden was again at his Rehoboth Beach home as Helene ravaged North Carolina over the weekend, but defended his efforts to coordinate a federal response.
“I was commanding,” Biden said. “I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command; it’s called a telephone.”
During her briefing at FEMA, Harris frowned when reporters asked questions about how the hurricane would impact her campaign and if the disaster was being politicized.
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