MIAMI — President Joe Biden touched down on Thursday in Florida’s state capital, less than a week after Tallahassee narrowly avoided a direct hit from Hurricane Helene that ravaged nearby coastal counties.
And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was 300 miles away.
As Biden was deboarding Air Force One in Tallahassee, DeSantis was holding a press conference at hurricane-devastated Anna Maria Island near Bradenton, which is on Florida’s Gulf Coast just outside Tampa.
Since recovery efforts began, DeSantis has sought to separate Florida’s response from the federal government, saying the state was able to move much faster. And early into his remarks on Thursday, DeSantis brought up the dockworkers strike that’s affecting ports in several states, including Florida, by listing off crucial supplies that would see disruptions — from medical equipment to vehicle parts, lumber and steel. He urged the Biden administration to “stand up for the storm victims” after ticking off actions Florida was taking.
“It really is incumbent upon the Biden-Harris administration to do everything in their power to ensure that these goods are where we need to be,” he said.
Thursday marked the second time DeSantis has opted out of meeting with Biden in Florida after a hurricane struck his state. Last year, he surprised the White House by announcing he would not take a visit with Biden after Hurricane Idalia hit the Big Bend, saying that surrounding security measures would be too disruptive for the recovery.
DeSantis was running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president at the time, when Biden had been the presumptive nominee on the Democratic side and the governor was after his job.
Asked Thursday at his Anna Maria Island remarks whether there was a particular reason he wasn’t with the president, DeSantis responded: “No. We had this planned.”
His absence was in contrast to some Republican colleagues in other storm-battered states. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this week said Biden called him on Sunday and praised the great relationship the state had with FEMA, though he also didn’t meet with Biden on Thursday. And South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster met Biden at the airport in his state on Wednesday when Biden was touring damage there.
Biden was instead greeted at the Tallahassee airport by local officials, including Democratic Mayor John Dailey of Tallahassee. Tallahassee is known as a stronghold for Democrats in the mostly Republican Panhandle.
There are no signs that DeSantis and Biden have talked, with DeSantis saying he missed a call from the president on Sunday because he was in flight. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that DeSantis and Kemp had been invited to the president’s stops on Thursday, but neither governor was attending. She added that Biden spoke with Kemp earlier in the morning.
“I don’t have a call to read out,” she said, when asked if Biden and DeSantis had spoken.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the former governor and a longtime critic of Biden, joined the president and Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at a stop in Keaton Beach, which was one of the areas hit hardest by Helene and two other hurricanes in just over a year. Scott helped lead a briefing and pointed out the path the storm took, and then he and Biden met with local first responders.
Scott’s office said he told the president that the federal government’s response to recent storms left too many Floridians “hurting and with unmet needs,” especially farmers. The senator led a letter to the Department of Agriculture this week asking for a disaster declaration and block grants.
Helene devastated the Southeast and first made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm. Though it raked through the Big Bend, it also caused tremendous storm surge along Gulf Coast communities. At least 19 people were killed in the state, most in Pinellas County.
In recent days, DeSantis relayed a tacit message indicating he didn’t think the federal government was doing enough in the recovery when he sent state helicopters to North Carolina to help deliver necessary supplies and to rescue Floridians who couldn’t get out of the devastation. On the ports issue, the governor has offered to have ships not involved in the negotiations rerouted to get the supplies to shore and said he would deploy the Florida national and state guard members there.
The White House said it has reached out to 200 different officials in Florida to see what help was needed, but didn’t address DeSantis’ criticisms around the port strike. Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokesperson for FEMA, said there were “no issues moving relief supplies for Hurricane Helene through the designated ports being used,” and added that the agency was working on a contingency plan.
“As President Biden said, the last thing we need is a man-made disaster on top of a natural disaster,” Rothenberg said. “We urge both parties to negotiate in good faith — fairly and quickly.”
Political leaders often suspend the partisan reality for a few hours during times of crisis, often appearing together to show they can work in unison to mobilize government resources to those who’ve suffered tremendous loss. By doing so, they try to send a message that some things are more important that politics, and — in Biden’s case — that they will show up in states even where they know they are unpopular.
“You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you,” Biden posted Thursday on X. “It’s the most basic part of being president.”
But that playbook frequently got ripped up when former President Donald Trump was in the White House. As president, Trump lashed out at Puerto Rico’s Democratic mayor and accused her of having “poor leadership” after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017. And POLITICO’s E&E News reported Thursday that Trump initially refused disaster aid after California wildfires in 2018, until a White House official showed him voting records that detailed he had a lot of support in the areas affected. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment from E&E.)
DeSantis and Biden have appeared together before in times of crisis, including in 2021 after the deadly Surfside condo collapse and in 2022 — just before DeSantis’ easy reelection — after Hurricane Ian hit Florida’s Gulf Coast.
DeSantis took those visits, even though he has long been vocally opposed to Biden’s handling of numerous issues, from Covid vaccine mandates to immigration. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, too, have often derided Florida’s policies, including its law banning most abortions after six weeks, its classroom standards for Black history and its permissive gun laws.
On the Republican presidential debate stage over the summer, then-candidate DeSantis called out the president for what he said was an insufficient, tone-deaf response to the Maui wildfire. DeSantis portrayed Biden as a useless leader relegated to his basement.
Scott has been no less critical of Biden. Yet he also met with him after Idalia when the governor would not, in addition to this week’s trip. And Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson — a potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate — also met with Biden on Thursday.
Scott and Biden have exchanged plenty of criticisms, including when Biden tore into Scott’s policy proposals during the midterms, when the Florida senator led the National Republican Senatorial Committee. As for Scott, this summer he called for Biden to resign as president after he dropped out of the 2024 contest, saying he couldn’t possibly be fit for the job.
Just days after the storm hit, Scott accused Harris of caring more about her election than about Florida, because she didn’t come down as vice president to ensure people had what they needed from federal agencies. Scott said in a statement after the meeting with Biden that he appreciated his visit but that “there is so much work to be done.”
“Floridians are resilient,” he said, “but recovery doesn’t fall just on these families — it’s an all hands on deck operation that requires the federal government to show up today, tomorrow and every day until the job is done and I won’t stop fighting to make sure that happens.”
Arek Sarkissian and Bruce Ritchie contributed to this report.
