Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' refusal to take calls from Vice President Kamala Harris over hurricane relief efforts is a new low in partisanship, wrote Ryan Teague Beckwith for MSNBC — and a sign of how far things have fallen.
An aide to DeSantis earlier in the week boasted that "Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn't answer," because it "seemed political."
The remarks triggered swift controversy, with Harris firing back that DeSantis was being "selfish" and "utterly irresponsible" and a spokesperson for her campaign calling him "emasculated."
All this stands in stark contrast to how another powerhouse GOP governor, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), reacted when Superstorm Sandy tore up his state, with mere weeks to go before President Barack Obama stood for re-election in 2012.
"As a top surrogate for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and a rising star in GOP politics, he spent most of the year railing against Obama's handling of the economy, blasting him as being out of touch and ineffective," wrote Beckwith.
But after Sandy killed more than 100 people and became the most expensive single storm in U.S. history, "The governor worked closely with Obama, talking with him regularly on the phone, touring the devastated Jersey Shore with him and praising his relief efforts in interviews."
When a Fox anchor tried to divert him back to discussion of Romney, Christie said, "If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me."
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But, Beckwith remembered, Christie's working with Obama was seen as a big reason he lost his bid to become the 2016 GOP presidential nominee.
"Memories of him working so closely with Obama haunted his failed 2016 bid for the Republican presidential nomination as primary voters regularly cited it as a concern," he wrote.
DeSantis' public attack on Harris at a moment when the administration is preparing to deliver relief to his state, wrote Beckwith, a sign of what Christie's fate created.
"It was a high point for bipartisan cooperation in the aftermath of a natural disaster, but it also appears to have been its death knell," he wrote, adding that GOP governors are "haunted" by the possibility that reaching across the aisle will receive backlash from their base.
"The damage is done," concluded Beckwith. "Even if most elected officials are focused on working together to provide relief to their communities, it only takes a few to derail the conversation into conspiracy theories and snarky attacks. And that's a disaster that's entirely human-made."
