"It’s matters that the worst damage happened to counties where Trump averaged over 70 percent of the vote. These counties have approximately 209,000 registered voters, out of 475,000 in all of District 2," he wrote.
He went on to say the process of recovery could turn the vote in that area blue.
"It also matters that the slow, incomplete recovery will suppress normally Republican voter turnout in ways I’m trying to understand," his email also said. "But first, it isn’t just a coincidence that the community quickest to respond and recover is Democratic Leon County and Tallahassee, where the local elected officials (ahem, including me) invested tax dollars wisely and maintained a strong readiness for such disasters as Hurricane Michael — while Republican strongholds like Bay, Jackson and Washington counties are struggling with even basic functions like emergency communications because of their lack of preparedness. Adequate funding and good government made the obvious difference."
Rackleff said his experience as a volunteer in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina influenced his decision as a commissioner to vote to spend money to prepare for disaster. He said while he served on the Leon County Commission, he and fellow commissioners "learned the hard lessons these hurricanes taught and acted to strengthen our preparedness and response capabilities."
How did they prepare? They invested, he said, in "stronger communications, consolidated emergency response center and community awareness systems" as well as "stormwater management to minimize localized flooding" and by installing smart meters that help map outages.
Rackleff laid the blame for the panhandle's devastation at the feet of what he calls "anti-tax and anti-government nonsense," and said many of the issues in counties most devastated by Hurricane Michael came from "years of state and local tax and budget cuts in basic services, including emergency management."
His email gave three examples: weak building codes, investor-owned regulated monopolies and lack of response from local officials.
"The Panhandle’s lax building codes, weaker than those adopted in post-Andrew south Florida, helped increase the widespread destruction of residential and commercial buildings," his email said. "Years earlier, Panhandle state legislators ensured that statewide codes exempted their region from higher standards for other parts of Florida that could have saved thousands of buildings from Michael."
As for the utilities? "Investor-owned Duke Energy and Gulf Power are still struggling to restore power to the disaster area and will take weeks more to finish, tasks made more difficult by their failure to invest in resilience," he wrote, then contrasted that with Tallahassee's state of power service: "taxpayer-owned Tallahassee utilities were restored in less than a week, thanks to a long tradition of prudent management by city officials, including our 'socialist' mayor, Andrew Gillum."
When Rackleff traveled to Chipley, he said no one from local city and county governments had a presence.
"The city and county governments were nowhere to be seen or heard, so nobody (including the mayor, when I talked with him, after I went to his home) knew if there had been a disaster declaration by FEMA, which would free up public and private resources," he said, adding that "the mayor was unable to call anyone, because there is no cell phone service; even the fire department depended on cell phones and had no contact with other agencies. This problem was repeated throughout the area."
Rackleff said these events have changed his race for the 2nd Congressional District. Before Hurricane Michael, pundits considered it "safe Republican” but he believes in the next two weeks, that dynamic could change.
While his campaign can continue as planned in areas that still have power and cable service, he said he'll have to find unconventional ways to reach the voters he says Republican policies harmed during and after Hurricane Michael. He said he remains optimistic that the slow response from leadership will help turn the panhandle blue.
"Having seen this movie before, I know that patience is ebbing and that anger against those in authority will grow. By November 6, it could well translate into an anti-incumbent wave of election upsets," he said, closing his email with, "I’m going all out to make that happen."
This article appears in Oct 18-25, 2018.