Kamala Harris Visits North Carolina to Check on Hurricane Response

Kamala Harris Visits North Carolina to Check on Hurricane Response

The vice president visited Charlotte, N.C., for an update on relief efforts after Hurricane Helene ravaged wide swaths of the Southeast.

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By Reid J. Epstein

Vice President Kamala Harris met with North Carolina and federal emergency officials on Saturday in Charlotte as she continued to help oversee the disaster response in the Southeast after Hurricane Helene.

Ms. Harris participated in a storm response briefing at a North Carolina Air National Guard base at Charlotte’s airport, where she was joined by Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Mayor Esther Manheimer of Asheville, N.C., which was particularly hard-hit.

The vice president praised local officials and residents for their response to the storm.

“I’ve been seeing and hearing the stories from here in North Carolina about strangers who are helping each other out, giving people assistance in every way that they need, including shelter, food, and friendship and fellowship,” she said.

Ms. Harris’s trip to Charlotte was her second trip this week to assess the storm’s toll in the Southeast, and it served as a reminder that in addition to running for president she continued to have duties to fulfill as the vice president.

In addition to reviewing the official storm response, Ms. Harris visited a volunteer center, where she briefly joined them making packages of donated necessities — including things like canned food, formula, diapers and flashlights — for North Carolinians stranded by the storm.

While the deadly storm and the conflict in the Middle East have at times diverted Ms. Harris from the campaign trail as she turns to her official duties, her aides and allies have said they believe having voters see Ms. Harris act as the vice president could make her appear presidential and empathetic to voters in a key battleground state.

The vice president’s office said 74 percent of those who reported losing access to electricity during the storm have had it restored. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is overseeing the federal response, has more than 700 people in North Carolina, Ms. Harris’s office said.

The vice president’s trip comes as her White House rival, former President Donald J. Trump, has made a number of false statements about the federal response to the storm. Mr. Trump’s allies, including elected Republicans and Elon Musk, the owner of the social media site X, have amplified much of Mr. Trump’s misinformation.

Mr. Musk on Friday was corrected on his social media site by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Mr. Musk subsequently wrote that Mr. Buttigieg was “on the ball.”

Ms. Harris did not address the misinformation in her public remarks Saturday. While she was in Charlotte, the White House released a memo addressing falsehoods it said were being spread by “scam artists, bad-faith actors and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests.”

On Wednesday, Ms. Harris skipped a planned bus tour of Pennsylvania with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, so she could visit Augusta, Ga. There, she toured a storm response command center and a residential area hit hard by the hurricane.

“In these moments of hardship, one of the beauties about who we are as a country is people really rally together and show the best of who they are in moments of crisis,” Ms. Harris said Wednesday in Augusta. “It really highlights the fact that the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us, and that the best of, the strength of who we are is, we come to each other’s aid in a time of need.”