Will Hurricane Matthew affect closely contested Eastern Seaboard Senate and House races this November?
Hurricane season and election season may clash in a major way over the coming weeks, around the funding that will be needed after Matthew has run its course. Hurricane Matthew is aiming for possible landfall along Florida’s Space Coast after ravaging across Haiti, Cuba and soon the Bahamas. It was a category-4 storm when it crossed the western part of Haiti, the strongest to hit the island country in the last 52 years.
Luckily we have very good tracking of extraordinary weather events like hurricanes, and warnings have gone up with enough time for the people in the path of this major storm to secure their homes, evacuate and seek shelter.
Hopefully the storm turns east and goes out to the Atlantic, but most models are now showing that Hurricane Matthew will make landfall sometime Thursday or early-Friday along the eastern coast of Florida and will then churn north, severely affecting the eastern seaboard in the days after.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall along the New Jersey and New York coasts after devastating the Caribbean. There were 157 deaths in the US alone and $71.4 billion in storm damage.
In the wake of the storm, Congress passed the Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill to increase the borrowing authority of FEMA. 36 Republican Senators and 67 Republican Congressmen and women were the only ‘no’ votes.
We need to ensure that the funding necessary to help families that suffer from the effects of Hurricane Matthew is readily available as soon as possible after the storm has passed. On the back of Republican obstruction in Congress after Sandy, it took more than 60 days for the legislation needed to bring relief to storm-affected communities.
In a statement about the preparations for Matthew, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said “you can’t take this stuff lightly.” Senator Rubio did just that as he was one of 36 Senators - all Republican - who voted against the funding legislation that brought disaster relief to communities ravaged by Hurricane Sandy damage. 67 Republican Congressmen and women joined with their Senate colleagues in denying communities the storm relief. The bill passed anyway.
Other Eastern Seaboard Senators who voted against the legislation and whose states are in the direct path of Hurricane Matthew include Johnny Isakson (R-GA); Tim Scott (R-SC); Richard Burr (R-NC); and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH). These senators are also up for reelection.
Will Congressional Republicans play politics this fall and block the funding needed to rebuild communities after Hurricanes and other natural disasters destroy our communities?
With the severe disfunction that we continue to see from Republicans in Congress, residents of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, all the way up to New Hampshire and Maine should ask themselves if Republicans in Congress are representing them and their communities, especially as their communities are affected more and more by weather-related disasters.
Let’s continue the progress that President Obama has been able to make for our country even in the face of unprecedented obstruction from the Republican Party.
Voters can make a strong statement of support for that progress and against Republican disfunction by electing a Congress that will work with a likely President Hillary Clinton to move our country forward and build and protect strong communities.