Ian aftershocks, Migrant mess, President Sasse

It’s Monday, Oct. 10, and the enormity of the recovery from Hurricane Ian is just beginning to set in.

Fort Myers Beach residents and business owners were permitted back to their property on Sunday and they found no power, no water and destroyed homes. Lee County schools remain closed and many school campuses are under going major reconstruction.

Thousand of evacuees remain in 12 shelters, dozens of hotels, and subsidized temporary housing. Forty-six thousand homes and businesses remain without power. Drinking water, storm and wastewater services in the hardest hit areas are still either not operating or not safe. At least 1,000 search and rescue team members are still looking for the missing. How many are still not unaccounted for? State officials have not updated their tally in a week.

Outside of Southwest Florida, life has not returned to normal in Central Florida, where floodwaters from lake Monroe finally crested after flooding downtown Sanford.

The aftershocks of the monster storm are expected to lead to tectonic shifts in Florida.

HERE’S WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Housing shocks: In Venice, about 200 people were still living in the high school last week because they had nowhere else to go. Many of them who are limited by low or fixed incomes fear that finding a decent place to live will become more difficult than before as the state faces a drum-tight affordable housing market. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has activated its Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program in 19 counties.

Time for hard questions: Should dangerous older trailer parks be phased out — particularly in high-risk coastal areas in an era of more powerful storms and deadly storm surge? They are a vital source of affordable housing for retirees, service industry employees and agricultural workers but should they be made stronger?

Shawn Hunte lived in one of those aging trailers and figured he would weather Hurricane Ian the same way he weathered countless storms as a shrimper on the flooded, tilted decks of bucking boats in high seas. But as Ian swept him in a raging current through his Fort Myers Beach trailer park to the top of a 15-foot tree, he clung to the trunk for three hours and survived.

Snowbirds will relocate: Experts now say that seasonal residents accustomed to traveling to Southwest Florida in the winter season will now descend upon South Florida, pushing up rents in Miami-Dade and Broward counties due to stronger demand for a tight supply of homes.

Marketers re-calibrate: Hurricane Ian temporarily wiped off the map many of Southwest Florida’s main tourist destinations, such as Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Captiva islands, so the state’s marketing agency, Visit Florida, is re-calibrating. It is launching a plan to promote travel to unaffected or parts of the state largely spared Ian’s wrath.

Insurance market tested: To date, insurers have reported a total of $3,660,732,214 in estimated insured losses and a total of 408,078 claims but total damages are expected to soar to between $45 billion and $100 billion. What will the financial toll mean to a Florida insurance market that is already ailing? “This is a test for the entire insurance industry,” one analyst told us.

Pine Island bridge: A temporary bridge to Pine Island, a barrier island whose road to the mainland had been severed by the storm, was completed last week. Locals had clamored for it after days of relying on volunteers to transport people and supplies by boat.

HERE’S WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Migrant mess-up? Documents obtained from the state agency charged with managing the governor’s controversial migrant relocation program show that the state may have violated its own guidelines in flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. A Florida Department of Transportation document explicitly states that its mission was “to relocate out of the State of Florida foreign nationals who are not lawfully present in the United States,’’ according to records obtained Friday by the Herald/Times.

That may pose a problem for Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose administration paid a Destin-based aviation company, Vertol Systems Company, more than $1.56 million to transport migrants — including two Sept. 14 flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, even though the 48 Venezuelan passengers never set foot in Florida.

Was it enough time? By the time Ian made landfall at a Category 4 storm, more than 2 million people were under evacuation orders to move to a shelter or safer ground. But some Floridians who were living in Ian’s path, particularly those in Lee County, said they did not have enough time to evacuate once the orders were issued.

DeSantis, as well as state and local emergency officials, have defended the timing of evacuation orders, but the family of Tom Cummiskey is among those wondering if it was enough.

Drown while driving: Cummiskey, 87, moved to Florida this summer and he knew he needed to evacuate his Fort Myers trailer the morning the storm hit. But did he leave early enough? How aware was he that shelters were open when the hotels he stopped at were full? Those are the questions his family was left asking after Cummiskey drowned in his submerged car in a drainage culvert outside a Fort Myers Publix.

For the record, here is a look at the official announcements in the 72 hours leading up to Hurricane Ian’s landfall on the southwest coast of Florida.

DeSantis/Biden détente: President Joe Biden and his wife Jill traveled to Fort Myers last week to tour the destruction from the storm. He declared it would take “years” for Florida to fully recover and commended the “extraordinary cooperation” his administration had with officials of every level of government. DeSantis, who last month arranged for flights to take migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard to ignite debate over Biden’s border policy, gave the president a cordial welcome. While both men commended the other, their praise was restrained.

Flush with cash: When DeSantis requested federal approval for accelerated emergency disaster reimbursements, his 2014 vote against hurricane aid for the New York region when he was a freshman in Congress surfaced. Critics noted the change of heart. Last week, DeSantis didn’t address his rationale, but made a point of making sure no one thought the state was completely dependent on the feds. He announced that when it comes to restoring electricity, water and transportation back to Southwest Florida, money is no object for the state. “We have the record budget surplus,’’ he said.

Gonna be a Gator? Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a favorite among conservatives and a known Trump critic, will likely become the next president of the University of Florida. The university announced that its presidential search committee unanimously voted to select Sasse, 50, as the sole finalist to lead one of the largest and the highest-ranked public university in the state.

Off to college: More Hispanics than ever are choosing to attend four-year universities in the U.S., according to an analysis released Friday by the Pew Research Center. However, two-year colleges registered a recent decline in enrollment.

Ian pause ends: Although life did not return to normal for much of Florida last week, many campaigns roared back to life.

Cardenas endorses Taddeo: Former Republican Party of Florida Chair Al Cardenas made a surprise endorsement of Democrat Annette Taddeo in the race for the Miami-Dade Congressional District 27. It’s considered one of the most competitive in the nation. “It’s the first time in four decades where I’m actually endorsing a Democrat for Congress,’’ Cardenas said.

Crist’s faithful supporters: Charlie Crist, the former governor and now Democratic nominee for governor, may have switched parties but about 50 of his former donors stayed with him. They have given him about $146,000, a fraction of the $24 million he has raised so far in this campaign, according to the Miami Herald’s analysis of campaign finance data maintained by the Florida Division of Elections.

Governors faithful to DeSantis: DeSantis has banked more than $100 million but the Republican Governors Association has given more to him than any other candidate, according to a Miami Herald analysis.

Purple state with red hue: Heading into the last month of Florida’s midterm election season, registered Republicans lead Democrats by a little over one percentage point, according to a Miami Herald analysis of state voter data.

Tuesday is voter registration deadline: Anyone wishing to cast a ballot in the midterm elections must register by Tuesday, Oct. 11.

GOP to make it easier to vote? After spending two years trying to make it more difficult for voters to vote, the governor and Republican-led legislature are now in a situation where they want to make it easier for those disrupted by Hurricane Ian to vote. (The region is dominated by Republicans.) DeSantis can issue an executive order that offers flexibility for the counties hit by the storm, and among the ideas underway: establishing super voting sites where voters can go instead of a precinct, with similar hours as the early voting sites, and waiving the signature to send absentee ballot to a new address.

Read up on some candidates: One of Florida’s most powerful lawmakers and a North Miami Democrat touting a “grassroots” campaign are competing in the Nov. 8 election to become state agriculture commissioner. Outgoing Senate President Wilton Simpson, a Trilby Republican and egg farmer, has more name recognition, political connections and funding as he goes up against Naomi Blemur, the first Haitian American to be a major-party candidate for a Cabinet seat.

House District 114: Attorney and construction executive Adam Benna is challenging incumbent state Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera, R-Coral Gables, to represent a swath of central and south Miami-Dade County in the Florida Legislature. Busatta Cabrera, 32, is a Republican and nonprofit executive who was first elected to the District 114 seat in November 2020. Benna, 34, is a former Miami-Dade assistant state attorney who is running as a Democrat.

Congressional District 28: Before even getting into why Robert Asencio decided to challenge a Republican U.S. House member with one of the most recognizable names in Miami-Dade County, the former police officer pivots to the biblical story of David and Goliath. “It’s a little tongue-in-cheek. But it’s also reality, right?” he asks, somewhat rhetorically. Asencio certainly lacks the popularity of Carlos Gimenez, the former Miami-Dade mayor. He also trails badly in fundraising in the race for Florida’s 28th Congressional District.

Troops to Haiti? The head of the United Nations on Sunday announced support for Haiti’s request for the immediate deployment of military troops to help the country take back control of its ports from powerful gangs and provide aid as Haitians confront a deadly cholera outbreak.

Twitter blocks Ladapo for ‘misinformation’: Twitter on Sunday removed a tweet from Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo for violating its rules on misinformation after he promoted a non-peer reviewed study by the Florida Department of Health that claims that the mRNA vaccine causes increased risk to 18-39 year olds. According to one analysis of the study, the study’s authors used “arbitrary selection of cardiac outcomes,” lacked validation, small sample size, and failed to control for COVID infection.

Trumps does Miami: Former President Donald Trump was in Miami last week courting a crowd of conservative Latinos in Miami at the America First Policy Institute’s Hispanic Leadership Conference. Trump slammed Biden’s immigration policies and inflation emphasized his support among Latinos.

Deadline for Truth Social: Former President Donald Trump’s quest to establish a Florida-based social media platform as a conservative alternative to Twitter will face a critical vote on Monday when investors decide whether to extend a deadline allowing more time for the federal government to sign off on the deal. A merger agreement between Sarasota-based Trump Media & Technology Group, Inc., and a publicly traded Miami investment company hangs in the balance, as shareholders decide whether to push for a one-year extension on a deadline to complete the $1 billion-plus deal by September 2023.

Reefs in distress: Florida reefs are experiencing the “first widespread, mass bleaching event” in seven years and the culprit is, according to scientists: rising ocean temperatures driven by climate change.

Mahi mahi in decline: Fishermen say they are seeing fewer mahi mahi out in the ocean, and the ones they are catching are much smaller, according to a group of multi-generational fishermen. They say the use of mono-filament line used to target the fish en masse is reducing the population rapidly.

Note: We’ll be off next week for an autumn break.

Thank you for reading. Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas curates the Politics and Policy in the Sunshine State newsletter. We appreciate our readers and if you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a note at meklas@miamiherald.com.

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