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TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Men and women were waiting for the late Florida governor Tuesday morning. No one has sought to seize Rick Scott 's chair of intimidation at the center of the state' s emergency operations. Before a hurricane, nobody could.
Mr. Scott is perhaps the most predictable part of the perilous weather in this state: a ball cap, moving statistics, an ever-moving source of well-crafted statements and a measured concern. But while the governor, whose screenplay is well-known, is campaigning for a seat in the US Senate, Hurricane Michael is offering a meteorological surprise with big stakes that is testing the courage of his government and he allows you to dominate the airwaves more than anyone else does not make weather forecasts. .
The storm, which is expected to land as a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday, less than four weeks before the national elections, presents opportunities and risks for Scott and many other candidates eager to demonstrate competence and gravity when the voters get an idea. start voting.
The way they approach preparations and the response to the storm could strengthen their leadership position – or halt months of painstaking campaign work rendered useless by the late blot of a catastrophic disaster.
[[[[To learn more about Hurricane Michael, follow our live briefing.]
"It's a chance to show leadership, but it's also a chance to fail at management," said the former governor, North Carolina, who has faced to a hurricane about a month before the elections lost in 2016. "People watch little – how you dress, how you say things, your passion, your empathy – and you are valued every moment."
In Florida, control will be bipartisan. There is Mr. Scott, a Republican in his second term who defies Senator Bill Nelson, one of the most important Democrats in the state. Meanwhile, mayor Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee, the Democratic nominee for the governorship, seeks to dismiss critics over his handling of Hurricane Hermine, a 2016 storm that left residents of the city without electricity for years. days and that inspired Mr. Gillum even before Hurricane Michael. appeared.
The two men appeared Tuesday on The Weather Channel, one of Florida's most coveted audiences during a week-long hurricane.
Thanks to the hurricane, the state postponed Monday night the deadline for voter registration, but only in the counties where polling stations were closed due to the storm – which has prompted the Florida Democratic Party to sue for a statewide extension. Republicans described the court challenge as significant.
The storm comes at a critical time when undecided voters – and polls suggest there are not many in Florida this year – are finalizing their choices in the November mid-term elections. Florida voters who have requested postal ballots already have them on hand.
No Southern Governor has such a prolific character in a hurricane as Mr. Scott, who was traveling from an emergency operations center to the county for closed meetings and bleak press conferences. Dressed in his style of what political strategists describe as "casual sinister" – a button-down shirt and a baseball cap bearing the title "NAVY", Mr. Scott issues warnings, warnings and a multitude of numbers intended to show state emergency state. muscular. On Tuesday, he led a series of briefings, from the town of DeFuniak Springs to Lechand, about 80 kilometers from Orlando.
A day earlier, his Democratic opponent, Mr. Nelson, had attempted to meet with reporters at the Tallahassee Emergency Management Center – the same place where Mr. Scott often commanded the attention of the 39 – state – but had been turned back because it was not there for official reasons. .
The hurricanes were a political opportunity for Scott, who has survived the collapses of three hurricanes and six tropical storms since his election in 2010, to showcase his governor's strengths. Before Hurricane Michael, his campaign was already broadcasting a television spot reminding voters of his efforts during Hurricane Irma last year. The governor's popularity culminated immediately after this storm; The Florida Keys still remember his relentless presence at televised news conferences, many of which were reluctant to evacuate their homes, but insisted on Mr. Scott's insistence.
Mr. Scott's administration was criticized during this storm, after the death of 12 people in a Broward County retirement home who had lost electricity and could no longer maintain air conditioning. Retirement home officials said they had appealed to the authorities for help, but to no avail. (State officials stated that no one had warned them that people were in danger.)
In August, Mr. Nelson also issued a message of attack claiming that Scott's government had hired inexperienced contractors overburdened with the cost of cleaning up debris after Hurricane Irma, prompting the governor to accuse Mr. Nelson to "politicize the recovery after hurricane".
Mr. Nelson, a senator since 2001, who also served as Florida's commissioner of insurance, is very familiar with hurricanes himself. He was also frequently present in the state during Irma. On Tuesday, he joined with other legislators to ask President Trump to declare a federal emergency in Florida, which the president did.
The other candidates could not play such a direct role. The Republican opponent of Mr. Gillum in the presidential race, former representative Ron DeSantis, is no longer in office. He was limited on Tuesday to collecting supplies for the victims of the storm.
However, the state will react in the coming days and will probably fuel the last weeks of the campaign, and may be directing voters in one direction or another, if history is a guide.
McCrory, the former governor of North Carolina who, during Hurricane Matthew, was as ubiquitous as Scott in Florida this week, has lost little of his 2016 campaign for a second term. But political actors in North Carolina believe that his margin of defeat would have been much greater without the hurricane and his reaction in the spotlight.
"It's a very delicate balance, especially so close to elections," said McCrory, who recalled napping on a bed of emergency operations center before a debate with his opponent. "You must cancel almost all political activities, especially fundraisers, and devote all your energy to the hurricane. And then you have to make the right decisions, because if you do not, it can have a more negative impact than a positive one. "
The politicians at the heart of the preparation for the storm insist, of course, not to focus on the next elections.
"This is not the time to do politics," Nelson said Tuesday morning at CNN.
Scott's campaign eliminated negative ads from Panhandle television markets and canceled campaign events. Mr. Gillum, who reported Monday in Key West a planned concert with Jimmy Buffett to travel to Tallahassee late Sunday night.
But politics remained inevitable, and it started with the White House. On Monday, Trump gave an interview to an Orlando TV channel in which he criticized Tallahassee's direction by Mr. Gillum – not for a hurricane, but for a crime, which increased for several years before the city does not involve dozens of new police officers. Mr. Gillum responded on Twitter that Mr. Trump should not "come to my state and talk about the city of my life" in the approach of a Category 4 storm.
Mr Gillum, one of five votes in the municipal commission, does not run the local government. This does not, however, prevent critics from claiming that the municipal power company had initially rejected foreign aid to restore power after Hurricane Hermine and that Mr Gillum was to blame. The Republican Party of Florida began airing ads last week in which it attacked Mr. Gillum in the past few days without electricity.
To avoid a repeat, Tallahassee has brought an army of public health and emergency workers before Hurricane Michael, Gillum residents said Tuesday. He visited parks where neighbors could fill sandbags to stem floods and went to a storm shelter, where he helped a woman with her suitcase and asked the older evacuees if they had what they needed to get through the storm.
"Are you the mayor?" Asked 68-year-old Florine Williams, who had a cane and teddy bear next to her at the Lincoln High School shelter.
"How are you?" Said Mr. Gillum.
"It's the best thing that happened to me here," Williams told him. "And you have my vote."
Patricia Mazzei has been reported to Tallahassee and Alan Blinder in Atlanta.
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