Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager said Thursday they hope election officials in Florida are considering making accommodations for voters affected by Hurricane Matthew.
“The one thing that we are hoping and expecting is that officials in Florida will adapt deadline to account for the storm,” Robby Mook told reporters Thursday.
“The voter registration deadline in Florida is Oct. 11 and then our hope would be that a little be it more time would be given for people who were expecting to be able to get registered before the election and we certainly expect that the governor and local officials will make that possible,” he said.
Clinton’s team caught grief this week after it was reported it had taken out a $63,000 Weather Channel ad buy in Florida during the hurricane. The ad was scheduled to run from Thursday through Tuesday.
They later suspended the buy, and announced Thursday they’d hold off until after the storm passed.
Mook said Thursday in reference to the now-reversed ad buy, “Our first priority on Hurricane Matthew is that people are safe. We’ve been doing everything we can through our social media and our email lists to make sure that all Floridians heed the warnings of public officials that are saying this could be a very deadly storm.”
“We are focused in particular on our staff and volunteers and making sure that they are safe. So that’s our priority and we’ll get back to campaigning when it is appropriate,” he said.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus accused the Clinton campaign Thursday of trying to cash in on the weather event, and he suggested the Democratic nominee was putting her interests before the needs of the people of Florida.
“Couldn’t let this crisis go to waste? Shameful [Hillary Clinton’s] campaign even considered exploiting Hurricane Matthew for political gain,” the RNC chair said Thursday on social media.
“Pulling these ads after getting caught won’t cut it. [Hillary Clinton] should apologize for using storm for votes,” he said. “The people in [the] path of #HurricaneMatthew need our prayers, support, and charity.”
Mook responded later by accusing the GOP of making things political.
“It’s unfortunate that Chairman Priebus is trying got politicize the hurricane. We were in the process of buying television time nationwide on hundreds of different media outlets. The Weather Channel, which is less than one percent of the television time that we were buying was part of that. Since the storm has clearly become very serious, we have asked the Weather Channel to roll back that buy until the storm is concluded,” Mook told reporters.
“We don’t think that the voters in Florida need this election to get mixed up in their efforts to get information on this storm,” he said. “And so we’re working with the Weather Channel to make that happen.”
