Missiles, a hurricane, a strike: Crises are shaping presidential race

Donald Trump speaks with Katie and Patrick Watson outside a damaged building

Oct. 2, 2024 3:28 PM PT

Any one of the events could have counted as an October surprise in a presidential election year.
If residents of North Carolina or Georgia face obstacles at the ballot box, turnout could be deflated.

ATLANTA — A trio of simultaneous crises sent the White House buzzing and threatened to reshape the presidential race this week, as President Biden and the two candidates vying to replace him scrambled to recalibrate their schedules and strategies for a world that felt even more chaotic than usual.

Any one of the events could have counted as an October surprise: a devastating hurricane in the Southeast that left nearly 180 dead; a dockworker strike that could disrupt the economy, and an Iranian missile volley launched against Israel that ups tension in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

The two candidates’ approach underscored the contrast both are trying to draw.

Former President Trump acted quickly and aggressively, descending into the hurricane zone on Monday, against the advice of local officials, where he delivered the first of many verbal attacks on his rival. Vice President Kamala Harris stayed in Washington, addressing the nation from FEMA headquarters and joining Biden for briefings in the situation room before traveling to Georgia on Wednesday, when officials said she could tour the area without being disruptive.

“We are here for the long haul,” Harris said at a news conference in Augusta, Ga., as she stood in front of a home covered by a fallen pine tree. “In these moments of hardship, one of the beauties about who we are as a country is people really rally together and show the best of who they are.”

As Harris touched down in Georgia, Biden flew to North Carolina to visit the emergency operations center in Raleigh and take an aerial tour of the state’s western mountains. Georgia and North Carolina are key battlegrounds on Nov. 5 and the storms could sway voters — affecting not just their thoughts on the role of government in an unstable world but their literal ability to cast ballots. Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced and scores of U.S. postal facilities and county election offices have suspended service.

On Wednesday, Biden said his heart went out to everyone who endured loss: “We are here for you — and we will stay here for as long as it takes.”

Biden promised boots on the ground, announcing he had directed the secretary of Defense to approve the deployment of a thousand active-duty soldiers to bolster the efforts of the North Carolina National Guard.

“These soldiers will speed up the delivery of life-saving supplies of food, water, and medicine to isolated communities in North Carolina,” Biden said in a statement. “They have the manpower and logistical capabilities to get this vital job done, and fast.”

Trump, who held a fundraiser in Texas oil country Wednesday, has not hesitated to rail against the Biden-Harris administration as the crises have unfolded. Traveling to the storm zone in Valdosta, Ga., on Monday, Trump criticized Biden for “sleeping” after Hurricane Helene and falsely claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp could not reach Biden.

Within hours of Iran’s attack on Israel on Tuesday, Trump released a blistering statement.

“The World is on fire and spiraling out of control,” Trump said. “We have no leadership, no one running the Country.”

The Trump campaign upped that critique Wednesday, lambasting Democrats’ handling of Iran and the Middle East.

“The inept and failed policies of the Harris-Biden Administration have enabled the Iranian-backed proxies that have sewn a path of death and destruction, resulting in catastrophic global ramifications,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Biden and Harris tried to project stability. After holding briefings in the situation room Tuesday after Iran fired missiles, Harris emphasized her support for Israel.

“It is important that we as the United States stand with Israel and its right to defend itself, especially against Iran, which poses a threat to American interests and American personnel in the region,” Harris said in an interview broadcast Tuesday evening by an ABC affiliate in Atlanta.

Harris’ advisors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, are eager to emphasize the contrast between the GOP and Democratic candidates. They want to show Harris can do her day job during stressful moments — juggling her schedule to attend national security and FEMA briefings — while still conducting interviews.

They also believe such crises remind voters of what they dislike about Trump, whom they see as politicizing such moments and trivializing them by, for example, calling American soldiers’ brain injuries “headaches.”

Vice President Kamala Harris greets people who were affected by Hurricane Helene

While Trump leaned hard on the idea that he is a tough candidate on whom voters can rely to act decisively, the Harris campaign stressed that the former GOP president is volatile and the last person to trust in a crisis.

Both of Trump’s secretaries of Defense and some of his national security advisors have warned that he should not return to the White House.

“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. “A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.”

For all the contrast between the two campaigns, both Trump and Harris walk a tightrope as they seek, in different ways, to represent themselves as forces of change who can also offer voters a sense of national stability.

Stuart Stevens, an advisor for former President George W. Bush’s two campaigns and Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 race, dismissed the idea that Trump’s tough rhetoric would sway voters.

“I’m going to vote for Trump because I want a less tumultuous presidency? Really? Donald Trump. It just doesn’t parse,” Stevens said.

He argued that such crises tend to benefit the candidate in power because they can be seen making decisions.

“It’s very difficult for Trump or Vance to break through,” Stevens said, noting that he and Romney were frustrated in late October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy consumed the country’s attention. “We went from sweeping rallies to sitting in a hotel room watching a president deal with a natural disaster.”

But other political experts reject the idea that the candidate in power during an emergency or crisis automatically wins or loses.

“It all depends upon how the elected officials handle the crisis,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who is unaffiliated with either campaign.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, it had a split result, Ayres said, boosting the fortunes of Mississippi’s then-GOP Gov. Haley Barbour while sinking those of his Democratic counterpart Kathleen Blanco in neighboring Louisiana.

Still, it’s also possible that a combination of crises can inspire anxiety to the point that it weakens an incumbent candidate.

“Chaos helps the change candidate, which is why both Trump and Harris have been trying to make the case that they are the candidate of change, of going forward,” he said. “We’ll see who wins that argument.”

The White House hurricane response triggered political blowback in Georgia on Tuesday when Biden approved a major disaster declaration for 11 Georgia counties — far short of the 90 counties Kemp had requested.

“11 counties?” Rep. Mike Collins, who represents Georgia’s 10^th Congressional District, posted on X. “Does @fema not understand this hurricane cut a 150-mile wide path of destruction from Valdosta to Augusta?”

After Kemp urged FEMA and the White House to expand the declaration, FEMA announced later Tuesday that the White House had added 30 more Georgia counties.

With 34 days left until election day, political observers were divided on whether the national and international crises will benefit Harris or Trump.

If residents of North Carolina or Georgia face obstacles at the ballot box, turnout could be deflated.

But David Wasserman, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said he did not expect the storm to have a lopsided political impact in North Carolina, as it wrought havoc not just in conservative rural areas but in the liberal stronghold of Asheville.

“I’m not sure we can glean a partisan inference here yet,” Wasserman said.

If the conflict in the Middle East escalates, it will almost certainly make voters more anxious about a world war.

If the strike playing out in ports from Maine to Texas stretches on for weeks, it could cause a shortage of goods and inflate prices at a time when Trump is already assailing Democrats on the economy.

Trump has blamed the strike, called by the International Longshoremen’s Assn. as workers seek significant wage increases and language that protects union jobs from automation, on the Biden-Harris administration.

“The strike was caused by the massive inflation that was created by the Harris-Biden regime,” Trump told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “Everybody understands the dockworkers because they were decimated by this inflation, just like everybody else in our country and beyond.”

On Wednesday, Harris pushed back, voicing her support for the dockworkers. The strike is about fairness, she argued, and workers deserve a fair share of the record profits made by foreign-owned shipping companies.

“Donald Trump makes empty promise after empty promise to American workers, but never delivers,” Harris said in a statement. “He thinks our economy should only work for those who own the big skyscrapers, not those who actually build them.”

Jarvie reported from Atlanta, Bierman from Washington, D.C. Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak contributed to this report.