On Wednesday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris traveled to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to assess the damage delivered by Hurricane Helene which killed at least 200 people in the Southeast. The trips came after both were heavily criticized by Donald Trump in the wake of the devastation. Two days earlier, the former president was in Valdosta, Georgia – one of the many towns impacted by the hurricane.
"The optics are terrible," says Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, referring to Trump arriving in the hurricane-damaged area before the president and VP.
"Biden went to the beach [and] Kamala Harris went to San Francisco and Los Angeles," he continues. "While the people of North Carolina were watching their homes float down the rivers, she was eating roasted duck – foods that most people in North Carolina have probably never heard of."
But while he acknowledges that should make it "impossible" for Harris to win North Carolina, he explains why the storm may actually help her win the state.
"The 17 most badly hit counties delivered a 200,000-vote victory margin for Donald Trump in 2020, the year when he only carried the entire state by 50,000 votes," Bauer describes. "I don't see right now how the people of those counties are going to be able to easily vote 35 days from now."
Election officials in North Carolina tell USA Today they are focused on getting election offices reopened so they can process new absentee ballot requests and enter voter registrations before the October 11 deadline. The director of the state election board also reports it is possible they could set up temporary early voting sites in tents in parking lots – just as the state did following Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Early voting in the state begins October 17.
