When Ron DeSantis was a newly elected congressman representing Jacksonville, FL, he voted against a 9.7 billion dollar aid package for victims of hurricane Sandy in 2013. Hurricane Sandy was, as Wikii described it, "the deadliest, most destructive, and strongest" Atlantic windstorm of 2012. The storm formed in late October, and recovery cost seventy billion (2012) dollars in damage, killing 233 people over its track from Kingston, Jamaica, the mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, and beyond to Nova Scotia.
Anytime a magnitude storm lands in a heavily populated area such as New Jersey, it makes news. Sandy caused power outages to eight and a half million people across 21 states. In late October 2012, the weather was cold, and people died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide, and fires started by candles used for lighting. Perhaps it was Breezy Point in Queens, NY, that grabbed the nation's attention when the neighborhood was under feet of stormwater surge that ignited the homes in the fires when it came in contact with electrical equipment.
DeSantis was one of 67 Republican Teabagger Tea Party congressmen to vote against flood relief for the NY metropolitan area. When questioned by reporters, DeSantis stated he would have voted for a "leaner package" that addressed immediate relief. Being a Floridian, Ron was certainly distracting from the obvious; hurricane survivors need more than just a tent, hotel, water bottles, and MRE. The recovery takes years, and victims can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they have nothing left. No job, no house, no money to relocate, just the clothes on their back; and they wouldn’t have that if they were swept up in storm surge. People need a helping hand when a catastrophe happens Recovery will not happen without the compassion of others. The bill he voted against passed in the house and in the Senate, passing on a voice vote.
Florida Times-Union wrote on the cruelty of Ron DeSantis in 2013.
"The problem with the Sandy package was, if you look at it, only 30 percent of it was going to be spent in the first two years," DeSantis said in an interview recently at his St. Augustine office. "It actually appropriated money out to 2020 and 2021, things that could not in any way be said to be emergency spending. It just was so much extraneous stuff."
Would he vote against disaster relief if a hurricane hit his district?
"If a hurricane came here, I would want any relief plan to be fiscally responsible," he said. "[I] would not want to add extra things and say that because this is a vehicle that's moving, let's try to Christmas tree it out."
Asked if he would vote against hurricane relief that affected his own district, DeSantis was less specific, but said he would support the right plan.
"The average person - if you had a situation that hit your family and you needed to do something, you would not just go and take a vacation, or you would not do something that's not related to the task at hand. But in Washington, that just seems to be par for the course. It's unfortunate, but that's just the reality in that place. We're trying to stop that behavior. To a man, the people I've talked to here [in my district] say we should have done something, but that was excessive. You don't want to spend money on other things."
We will see if he finds the likely seventy billion relief package needed for recovery of the millions of people harmed by the surges of Hurricane Ian as excessive. He is so blessed to have a Presiden that sees pain and sorrow and works hard to ease suffering. DeSantis would be as cruel as possible if this storm happened in a blue state.