Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics — Week of 10.6.24

This state is reeling.

Many are still without power after Hurricane Milton, which struck less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene. The Gulf Coast was slammed by both storms, and parts of the state will be recovering for a long while.

As if that trauma wasn’t enough, Milton brought a brutal tornado outbreak to parts of the state that appeared most out of harm’s way, at least when it came to Milton’s worst winds, rain and storm surge.

A record number of tornado warnings came down, with dozens of reports of touchdowns. And yes, hurricanes are known to spawn tornadoes. But the rapid number of touchdowns focused only on Florida, along with the size and speed of those twisters, was shocking.

And it caught many off guard. Milton hadn’t even made landfall yet, and wasn’t expected to severely impact the southeastern portion of the state. Yet these tornadoes are contributing significantly to the storm’s death toll. One killed multiple people in a St. Lucie County retirement community.

A common refrain from Floridians is that while hurricanes may be more destructive overall, dealing with them is preferable to living in tornado alley because at least with hurricanes, you have advance evacuation warnings to guide your behavior. Tornadoes offered no such heads-up.

Milton, unfortunately, just hit Florida with the worst of both worlds. And it showed clearly how important it is to take these storms seriously.

Our hearts go out to all of those affected who are now trying to put things back together in the weeks and months ahead.

Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: Ron DeSantis. DeSantis gets credit here for his handling of Milton, earning praise even from President Joe Biden as DeSantis was engaged in a war of words with Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris.

DeSantis was clear about the need to evacuate early while also sending a reassuring message to Floridians who were bracing for potentially devastating impact.

As wild rumors spread online about Floridians potentially having their property commandeered or being barred from reentering the state, DeSantis also shut that down as well. That’s notable given that much of this online misinformation has been propagated by Right-leaning accounts.

DeSantis’ brashness, which can at times be a turnoff to many, also did him well here. He shut down a reporter citing a doom-and-gloom report projecting $50 billion in damage before assessors even had a chance to survey the storm’s aftermath. He also brought back his tough talk against looters, warning they could meet the wrong end of a gun if they trespass anyone’s property.

Now, yes, there was an extended back-and-forth between DeSantis and the Vice President that we could have done without. Partisan bickering like that in the middle of a crisis can further feed into people’s distrust of government officials, from one party or the other, at a time when trust in governmental response is at its most needed.

But, let’s be honest, Harris has been asserting herself more in the White House as she has campaigned for President in a way to show her executive bona fides. But Biden is President, and it should be him leading the storm response. Donald Trump wasn’t putting Mike Pence in charge of disaster relief. It wasn’t Dick Cheney who got hit for the federal government’s inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina.

So DeSantis’ underlying point here, that Harris was needlessly inserting herself into this process, wasn’t wrong if you look at standard precedent.

And Biden himself praised the Governor’s response despite the kerfuffle, saying DeSantis was doing a “great job.” That says it all.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: National Hurricane Center. Yes, some of the worst-case scenarios did not come to pass. Yes, it’s easy for cynics to say that forecasters cried wolf.

But if you actually look at the NHC’s forecasts from start to finish, they were almost on point from the very beginning.

“NHC Advisory 1 for Tropical Depression 14 had landfall only 12 miles north of where Milton eventually made landfall, at a 4-day lead time,” wrote Nahel Belgherze, a weather watcher, in a post on X. “One might say they’re pretty good at their jobs.”

The doomsday outcome of the storm slamming directly into or above Tampa-St. Pete was emphasized because of its potential catastrophic damage and the fact that it was well within the cone. The storm’s projected path continued to wobble even Wednesday, hours ahead of landfall. It would have been logistically impossible to evacuate Tampa-St. Pete with such short notice, hence the early warnings and evac orders.

But in the end, the point of landfall was just a few miles off from where forecasters placed it when Milton began to form days out from impact. All in all, this was a win for our modern, more improved methods of tracking these storms.

The biggest winner: Evacuation orders. And to those who kvetch after the fact that these evacuation orders were unnecessary, both DeSantis and local leaders with the best knowledge of these communities were behind those pushes. Their decisions were also backed up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator under Biden, who said the orders saved lives.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said more than 90,000 people went to shelters, and it’s likely that many more moved out to stay elsewhere with friends and family or in hotels.

More than a dozen people lost their lives due to Milton. That number would have been higher if everyone on the Gulf Coast stayed put.

And again, to critics of these orders, let’s look at this logically.

We can all agree that a last-minute evacuation order hours ahead of landfall — when, yes, we’ll have a better idea where the storm is and isn’t going — is not doable. There were traffic and gasoline issues when people were given multiple days to get out. What do you think happens when that window gets shrunk to a few hours? People stuck in their cars in gridlock on that highway as a major storm plows through, that’s what.

So by necessity, we need these orders to go out early. And days ahead, we don’t yet have the ability to precisely pinpoint where these storms are going (though again, the NHC did a great job here!). That means, at the time these orders have to go out in order to mean anything, the area that could be impacted is obviously going to be wider than the area that is eventually impacted.

So by definition, every single storm is going to feature regions that were evacuated in the days ahead that, in the end, were not severely affected by the storm.

Pointing to whatever particular place that was after the fact is just being a contrarian. And it’s breeding distrust with people who may not heed these orders in the future.

But these orders save lives. And the best thing you can do in a storm is listen to your trusted leaders rather than people shouting on the internet.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Pro-Debbie Mucarsel-Powell PAC. We already criticized politicians for trying to raise money during Hurricane Helene at a time when Floridians were scrambling to prepare for the impending storm.

Apparently, a group supporting Democratic Senate candidate Mucarsel-Powell did not get the message.

Mucarsel-Powell herself appeared in last month’s entry, as she shuffled off to New York to fundraise as Helene closed in. This week, less than a day after Milton hit, The Majority Rules PAC sent out a campaign email courting donations to support Mucarsel-Powell, featuring a bunch of forced Taylor Swift puns while asking for donations.

Now to be clear, this came from an outside group, and wasn’t a direct error by Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign this time around. The Majority Rules PAC supports candidates across the country with a focus on ending partisan gerrymandering.

Well, if they think Mucarsel-Powell’s addition to the Senate would help their cause, the group screwed up royally here.

The email says it is from “Debbie Mucarsel-Powell” (with an email address indicating an association with Majority Rules, but once that could easily be overlooked). It’s entirely written in the first person. And it’s signed off by “Debbie (your fellow Swiftie).”

Only at the very bottom does it contain the standard disclaimer that it comes from an outside group. Of course, that’s how email blasts like this typically operate in an effort to sound more personable. But here, The Majority Rules PAC risks people reading these and directing their anger at Mucarsel-Powell for trying to court cash less than 24 hours after a storm just ripped across the state.

In a race where she can afford few to no mistakes in order to defeat Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who has won every statewide race he’s ever run, this is not helping.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Dog owner who tied pup to a pole. Honestly, what is wrong with some people? On Wednesday morning, hours ahead of landfall, a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) trooper rescued a dog who was tied to a pole near Tampa, presumably by an owner who had fled ahead of the storm.

“Do NOT do this to your pets please,” the FHP wrote in a social media post with video of the encounter.

Yes, it can be difficult at times finding shelters or hotels that accommodate animals. But — and we can’t believe we have to say this — tying the animal to a fence is not the reasonable solution here!

How could this person make it part of their daily life to care for this animal then essentially leave it to die at the drop of a hat?

Thankfully, the dog is OK.

“The dog rescued by FHP Tampa is safe and receiving care,” the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said. “Troopers brought him to a vet, where he was examined for injuries and received a clean bill of health.”

Still no word on who committed this atrocious act, however.

The biggest loser: Baseball in St. Pete in 2025. We’ve all seen images of the Trop’s roof being torn apart by the hurricane’s winds. The fabric was mostly ripped off, though the metal structure otherwise remained. But the roof hasn’t been replaced since it was built in 1990.

So what does that mean for next season?

Well, it’s not clear. The Rays say it may take weeks to fully assess the damage from Milton. And while Tampa Bay isn’t scheduled to play a home game until March 27 of next year, it’s uncertain whether the roof will be fully fixed by then, if at all.

There are other stadiums not too far from St. Pete that could host the Rays until the Trop is functional again. But there are logistical issues with each. And the Rays’ new stadium isn’t set to open until 2028.

There is still a chance that things get patched up in time for Opening Day. But a lot of uncertainty remains for the Rays’ 2025 season at the very least.