President Joe Biden on Saturday saw from the sky Hurricane Idalia’s impact across a swath of Florida before he set out on a walking tour of a city recovering from the storm. Notably absent was Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who declined to join Biden after he suggested that the Democrat’s presence could hinder disaster response efforts.
Biden, when asked about his rival’s absence, said he was not disappointed by the turn of events, but welcomed the presence of Rick Scott, one of the state’s two Republican US senators. He pledged the federal government’s total support for Floridians. “I’m here today to deliver a clear message to the people of Florida and throughout the Southeast,” Biden said after the walking tour. He spoke outdoors near a church that had parts of its sheet metal roof peeled back by Idalia’s powerful winds and a home half crushed by a fallen tree.
“As I’ve told your governor, if there’s anything your state needs, I’m ready to mobilize that support,” he continued. “Anything they need related to these storms. Your nation has your back and we’ll be with you until the job is done.’’ Earlier, the mayor of Live Oak, which is about 80 miles east of Tallahassee, the state capital, thanked Biden and first lady Jill Biden for coming and “showing us that we’re important to you.”
On Friday, hours after Biden said he would be meeting with DeSantis, the governor’s office issued a statement saying there were no plans for that. “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.
DeSantis’ office said his public schedule Saturday included stops in Keaton Beach, about 60 miles southwest of Live Oak, and Horseshoe Beach, about 75 miles away, with the last event beginning at 1:45 p.m. Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning along Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region as a Category 3 storm, causing widespread flooding and damage before moving north to drench Georgia and the Carolinas. As Biden left Washington on Saturday morning, reporters asked what happened with the meeting. “I don’t know. He’s not going to be there,” the president said of DeSantis. The political disconnect between both sides is 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.