Florida residents, after the back-to-back hits from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, are getting a lot of "lip service" from the federal government, including from Vice President Kamala Harris with her claims that Gov. Ron DeSantis won't speak with her, Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia told Newsmax on Friday.
"They may be preparing or working behind the scenes, but the issue here for the people in my district — and I would speak on behalf of probably all Floridians — is that when you have a natural disaster like this, you want to be seen, you want to be heard," the Republican lawmaker said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
But Harris, said Ingoglia, is placing "fake phone calls to our governor, saying that she was trying to get in touch."
Instead, the government should be "out in front" so people know it is working for them, he said.
"We're just not seeing that," he said. "What we are seeing is state and local governments working hand in hand, making sure that we get people back up and running."
Harris has said she's tried to contact DeSantis. The governor in return said he was not aware she was trying to call him, and accused her of using the hurricane for political purposes.
Meanwhile, Ingoglia said his constituents are "resilient" and doing well.
"This was a very scary storm," he said. "It took almost a week to get here, a Category 5 buzz saw, which created a lot of anxiety."
Ingoglia added that he lives in Hernando County, which was hit hard on its coast with the storm surge from Helene, while the east side was hit with the back end of Milton, suffering wind damage.
"We're recovering," he said. "It's going to take awhile. There are still 24,000 people without power in the county, but we're working hard to get it back."
The debris from Helene also caused issues as Milton approached, but "we did an exceptional job getting this state ready for this second hurricane," said Ingoglia. "The governor is right; we sort of dodged a bullet. This could have been much, much worse; so we're thankful for that. But Floridians should rest assured that we are on top of it and the governor is on top of it."
He added that a great deal of help is coming through social media, with local governments putting out calls for volunteers and people responding to calls for donations.
"I think what makes Florida so great: It's the communities and the people of Florida that do the main lifting of the recovery efforts," Ingoglia said. "Look at the linemen. These guys are working day and night, night and day, moving across the state, getting ... the businesses back up so we can so we can get our families and communities back up."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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