MAP: Which GOPers Voted to Help Victims of Katrina, but Not Sandy?

Fifty-eight Republicans in the House supported aid for just one storm.


On Tuesday, the Senate is expected to finally approve a Sandy aid package worth about $50 billion, three months after the hurricane devastated major metropolitan regions on the East Coast. Many GOP representatives bitterly oppose this bill and an immediate relief package failed to pass the GOP-controlled House in 2012. But when it comes to hurricane relief, the GOP isn’t exactly consistent: In 2005, 58 House Republicans who voted no on the Sandy aid bill approved a disaster relief package for Katrina victims worth $51.8 billion—less than two weeks after the storm hit.

The map below shows states where representatives voted on both Katrina and Sandy aid bills but changed their votes. For example, Florida, which was slammed by Katrina, has two GOP reps who voted for Katrina aid and nixed disaster relief for their Northern neighbors. States that suffered less severe Katrina damages, like Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee, are all represented by Republicans who chose to support the victims of Katrina but not Sandy. Louisiana is the exception; the lawmakers that have been around through both hurricanes appear to still have Katrina’s aftermath fresh in their minds: Republican Reps. Charles Boustany and Rodney Alexander both supported aid for Sandy.

Conservatives are using the usual argument that the Sandy aid bill had more pork and wasteful spending than the Katrina aid bill. Jason Klindt, a spokesman for Rep. Sam Graves (one of the reps who voted for Katrina aid and against Sandy aid), told ProPublica that “the difference is the fiscal state of the country.”

But Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and author of The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State, says that this doesn’t tell the whole story: “Although blue NOLA was hit, the rest of the states on the Gulf are red states, and Louisiana has a lot of red parts.” She points out that “House Republicans have got themselves tied into kind of a pretzel” because “they have made ideological commitments against pork.” Dauber says it’s possible those Republicans who voted against the bill did so in order to fend off challenges in the primaries from Tea Party and other rightist candidates, a risky political maneuver, as “voting against disaster relief is super stupid.”

That’s a lesson Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) appears to have learned the hard way: Before his state was hit by Sandy, he voted against aid for Katrina. He’s the only GOP representative in the United States that was present for both disasters, and changed his mind in the end.

Correction: A previous version of the key stated that the purple area refers to a Democrat. It refers to Scott Garrett, a Republican. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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