This is NOT a good thing for Florida Gov DeSantis political future if history is any indication….
Ask former Jersey Governor Christie….
DeSantis just about HAS TO spent some time with his Democratic President in connection to the building collapse tragedy …
*Preview of the 2024 Presidential election guys?
A disaster had just struck. Dead bodies were being recovered and people were homeless. But political opportunists didn’t care about that. They were angry that a Republican governor was putting politics aside and working with a Democratic president.
The year was 2012. Hurricane Sandy had just devastated New Jersey. And the top adviser for then-Gov. Chris Christie was shocked by the calls from donors infuriated that his decision to work with Barack Obama was handing him a win just a week before the president’s reelection.
Democrat Joe Biden will make his first trip to Florida as president to meet with the families of the dead and missing. He will likely appear beside Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen as a top-tier potential presidential candidate who might challenge Biden’s reelection in three years. Insiders in both administrations say they’re focusing on the crisis in Surfside, not on scoring political points.
But regardless of how the governor, president and staffs comport themselves, there are political pitfalls and consequences that have lasting electoral effects, as the 2012 relationship between Christie and Obama showed. Although the scope and scale of the two disasters are utterly different — Sandy killed fewer people than died in Surfside, but the storm caused wider devastation necessitating much more federal aid — the partisan political considerations are similar: Should DeSantis appear with Biden? Should they shake hands, or even hug? If either man uses the occasion to make a political argument, how should the other respond?
“The irony was people were calling saying [Christie] should put politics first, not his constituents: Put politics first, don’t appear with the president, don’t ask for help,” recalled DuHaime.
The White House and Florida governor’s office in Tallahassee are in talks to figure out each man’s schedule and whether and how each man will appear together on camera — essentially, what political professionals call the “optics” of such visits — at the same time the agencies under them are coordinating their response. DeSantis isn’t expected to greet the president at the airport, as Christie did in 2012, according to those familiar with DeSantis’s thinking….
…
DeSantis has quickly risen to power in Florida politics and built a brand as a sharp-elbowed partisan warrior. He has been widely praised by Republicans and Democrats for his handling of the Surfside tragedy even after briefly heading to the Panhandle city of Pensacola the day after the condo collapse to announce the dispatching of state law enforcement officers to the border with Mexico. Biden, who has made bipartisanship a mantra for his administration, is primarily coming down as the Consoler-in-Chief, a man who has buried a wife, daughter and son over the years and established an identity as an avuncular figure with an instinctual empathy that connects deeply with grieving people….
Update…..
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, sitting to Biden’s right at a table in Surfside, thanked the president for federal support in the eight-day rescue operation, which was paused Thursday due to safety concerns.
“This is your show. We just want to make sure [you have] whatever you need,” Biden told DeSantis.
DeSantis applauded the federal response, saying, “You guys have not only been supportive at the federal level, but we’ve had no bureaucracy. When we’re dealing with FEMA, we’re literally getting requests routed from local to state to federal in no time and the approval is happening.”
The Republican governor added, “What we just need now is we need a little bit of luck and a little bit of prayers, and we would like to be able to see some miracles happen.”….
top image….WPTV
bottom image…Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS
I don’t see the connection.
I just hope that any dignitary visit does not interfere with the resources or focus of any recovery efforts at the specific site with so many families still going through absolute torture.
Read the piece…..
Christie tried to do the right thing for his state….
DeSantis certainly should….
But later?
Christie got a hurting for it…..
It’s not remotely the same thing.
The issue was not that Christie met with Obama.
But this happened RIGHT BEFORE the 2012 general election and Christie went on every tv station to praise Obama to the hilt and say “he no longer cared” about the Presidential election. Many people were under the impression that Christie actually endorsed Obama for reelection.
I do not think that will be the case with DeSantis.
CG?
Christie needed federal money after Sandy
Obama was there to help
Biden is there to be supportive
Other GOP couldn’t give a rats ass
He’s consorting with the enemy if there is together photo op forthcoming
I totally agree that Biden is a good person to talk to the grieving families.