After days of speculation, President Joe Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced Wednesday that they’d had a phone call and each praised the other’s efforts to deal with Hurricane Ian. But the peace may be tenuous at best.
Biden said during a morning speech that he talked to DeSantis “for some time” the previous evening about preparations for the storm. DeSantis made bipartisan overtures as well, saying he appreciated the Biden administration‘s consideration for the people of Florida.
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“When people’s lives and their property are at risk like this, we all need to work together regardless of party lines,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “The Biden administration has approved our request for a pre-landfall declaration and did that very quickly, so we are very thankful for that. And it’s my sense that the administration wants to help.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked DeSantis in an interview if he thought Florida would get the aid it needs in a charged political environment. The governor said he was “actually cautiously optimistic.”
“As you say, Tucker, we live in a very politicized time,” DeSantis said. “But you know, when people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything, if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to. So I’ll work with anybody who wants to help the people of southwest Florida and throughout our state.”
That didn’t stop the curiosity and chatter in Washington.
Reporters have asked about Biden and DeSantis during each White House news briefing this week. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mentioned their call unprompted on Wednesday and was still asked about it by three separate reporters before the briefing ended.
She insisted that there was “no politics” involved in the call and that the hurricane was all the two spoke about. Jean-Pierre said she didn’t know how long the call lasted.
Even the hosts of The View dedicated a segment to the Biden-DeSantis call.
It was all a far cry from when Biden and DeSantis met last year in the wake of the Surfside condo collapse. The two were pictured together in a relatively low-key meeting to discuss responding to the disaster.
However, the stakes are different this time.
Ian made landfall in Florida shortly after 3 p.m. on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm with winds nearing 150 mph. The National Hurricane Center has warned of imminent “catastrophic storm surge, winds, and flooding.”
In which case the news of a phone call should be the end of the Biden-DeSantis saga, argues Republican strategist Doug Heye.
“I don’t see what the issue is,” he said. “They spoke last night. Why, how, and where are they supposed to meet before the storm hits? The proper authorities of jurisdiction are in regular contact, as they should be.”
Democratic strategist Tom Cochran opined that “in politics, there’s always an ulterior motive” but also downplayed the controversy.
“I don’t see this as significant, and it’s obviously in the best interests of their mutual constituents in Florida for them to speak,” he said. “They’re obviously on opposite sides of many political and social issues, but when it comes to the safety and well-being of Americans, I’m pretty sure they’re on the same page.”
Before the call was announced, reporters asked why the two hadn’t spoken, noting that Biden had called Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL), and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) during issues in their states. However, Biden did not speak with Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) during the Jackson water crisis, a point the White House emphasized earlier in the week.
Nonetheless, the will-they-or-won’t-they story showcases the increased stature of DeSantis in national politics over the last year. The Florida governor has outraised both Biden and former President Donald Trump in 2022. DeSantis leads Trump by an impressive 8 points in a USA Today-Suffolk University poll asking how registered Florida Republican voters would vote in a hypothetical primary between the two. That poll is far from an outlier, with numerous others in the last year having similar results.
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Trump also faced questions about his interactions with governors during his run in the Oval Office. Then-Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Trump refused to meet with him about Hurricane Maria in 2019. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) also blamed Trump during his response to the pandemic, saying he left governors “on our own” to obtain ventilators.
Biden and DeSantis have engaged in many proxy battles as DeSantis rises as a possible 2024 presidential candidate, clashing over immigration, flying immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and parental rights, among other issues.
