In the two days after Hurricane Ian ripped into Florida on Sept. 28, killing at least 119 people and leaving more than $50 billion in insured losses in its wake, none of the state’s 16 Republican congressional representatives and neither of its two U.S. senators voted for a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through Dec. 16 despite it including nearly $21 billion for disaster relief.
Democrats, most notably Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) who is challenging two-term incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, are making a campaign issue of those votes, which saw the stopgap measure adopted on Sept. 30 by the Democrat-majority House in a 230-201 near-total party-line tally.
Rubio was not present when the Senate approved the resolution on Sept. 29 in a less-partisan 72-25 vote but said if he was not dealing with Ian’s aftermath in Florida, he would have voted against it because it contains too much pork and doesn’t directly earmark money for hurricane recovery in the state.
“We are capable in this country, in the Congress, of voting for disaster relief after key events like this without using it as a vehicle or a mechanism for people to load it up with stuff that’s unrelated to the storm,” he said on CNN Oct. 2. “It had been loaded up with a bunch of things that had nothing to do with disaster relief.”
The continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded through mid-December—Congress has only adopted “proper” annual budgets before the beginning of the fiscal year six times in the last 40 years—includes $2 billion for disaster relief and an $18.8 billion appropriation to boost the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Disaster Relief Fund to approximately $35 billion.
The measure includes $1 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), $112 million for security at federal courts, caps on insulin prices, and an array other allocations, prompting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to call it “a lame duck spending bonanza” that allows Democrats “to spend over a trillion dollars at the end of the year and continue funding for 87,000 new IRS agents” before a new Congress is seated in January after November’s midterm elections.
“I would never put out there that we should go use a disaster relief package for Florida as a way to pay for all kinds of other things people want around the country,” Rubio said on CNN, claiming the measure is larded with “pork.”
Florida Democratic congressional representatives blasted their GOP colleagues for “playing politics” in an emergency, with Demings in an Oct. 3 Twitter post zeroing in on Rubio.
“Floridians deserve better than a Senator who says he’d vote against Hurricane Ian relief,” she said in the first of a series of statements not about the reason for Rubio’s opposition to the measure, but in his abstaining from the vote.
The Demings’ campaign has made an issue of Rubio missing votes. According to GovTrack.us, the former Florida Speaker of the House has missed 9.2 percent of roll call votes since being first elected to the Senate in 2010. The average missed votes among his chamber contemporaries is 2.4 percent, GovTrack.us documents.
“Over and over again, time and time again, when Florida has needed Marco Rubio the most, he has not shown up. We deserve better,” Demings told Joy Reid on MSNBC Oct. 5.
A 27-year career law enforcement officer and former Orlando Police chief elected to the House in 2016, Demings launched a “33 reasons why” campaign theme on why Rubio should not be reelected on Oct. 6. A new reason is being posted each day before the election.
“Reason #3 why we need #RetireRubio: He doesn’t show up to work, and when he does bother to show up, he hurts Florida,” Demings said in her Oct. 8 “33reasonswhy” statement.
Rubio notes Demings voted by proxy 41 times in 2021 during the pandemic, among the upper third of proxy voters, and his campaign is now nearly exclusively focusing on his on-the-ground hurricane response efforts.
Despite his opposition to the continuing resolution, like 12 of the 16 Florida’s House representatives who voted against the measure, he joined fellow GOP Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)—who was on hand on Sept. 29 to vote “nay”—in calling on the Senate Appropriations Committee to provide “much-needed assistance to Florida.”
“Hurricane Ian will be remembered and studied as one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the United States,” the GOP senators wrote in a joint Sept. 30 letter. “Communities across Florida have been completely destroyed, and lives have been forever changed. A robust and timely federal response, including through supplemental programs and funding, will be required to ensure that sufficient resources are provided to rebuild critical infrastructure and public services capacity, and to assist our fellow Floridians in rebuilding their lives.”
Through Aug. 3, when their campaigns last filed financial reports with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC)—the next quarterly filing deadline is Oct. 15, Demings had significantly out-raised Rubio but the incumbent had nearly twice the cash on hand.
Demings had to run a primary campaign against three opponents, which she easily won on Aug. 23, while Rubio was uncontested in the GOP preliminaries.
According to Demings campaign, it had raised $47.2 million, spent $39.16 million, and had nearly $8.82 million on hand in early August.
Rubio’s campaign reported raising nearly $36.5 million, spending $21.62 million, and having $15 million on hand.
Despite a spirited campaign and her credentials as a career police officer, Demings remains a significant underdog with elections forecaster FiveThirtyEight giving Rubio an 86 percent chance of winning a third term.
A rash of recent polls appear to confirm that prognosis. Real Clear Politics’ average of six polls since late August show Rubio with a 4 percentage point lead over Demings, with 10 percent of voters undecided.
That average includes a Mason-Dixon survey released in early October that showed 49 percent of 800 respondents favored Rubio to 42 percent who were for Demings.
The poll also noted that 16 percent of those 800 likely voters—128 respondents—had never heard of Demings compared to 99 percent who recognized Rubio as one of the state’s U.S. senators.
