President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris raced to the Southeast on Wednesday to survey the storm damage from Hurricane Helene and curb criticism that they dropped the ball in responding to the storm, which has killed at least 189 people.

Millions have remained without power and running water since Helene made landfall on Thursday, devastating the interior Southeast. The path of destruction cut through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Residents and business owners are wondering whether anything is left to salvage.

On Wednesday, Mr. Biden visited North and South Carolina. Ms. Harris traveled to Georgia. North Carolina and Georgia are also battleground states in the presidential election.

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On Thursday, Mr. Biden will visit impacted communities in Florida and Georgia, and Ms. Harris is scheduled to visit North Carolina later.

‘Jump-start’ recovery efforts

While in North Carolina, Mr. Biden sought to accelerate the relief effort amid allegations the administration was caught flat-footed by the slowly approaching storm.

“We have to jump-start this recovery process,” said Mr. Biden, who took a helicopter ride to survey the damage in hard-hit Ashville. “People are scared to death. This is urgent.”

Before departing the White House for the visit, Mr. Biden directed up to 1,000 active-duty troops to support the North Carolina National Guard’s response to Hurricane Helene.

“These soldiers will speed up the delivery of life-saving supplies of food, water and medicine to isolated communities in North Carolina — they have the manpower and logistical capabilities to get this vital job done, and fast,” Mr. Biden said.

In North Carolina, Mr. Biden defended his efforts.

“Even before Hurricane Helene hit, I directed my team to do everything possible to prepare to support communities in the storm’s path,” he said.

AWOL allegations

The efforts are intended to compensate for Mr. Biden’s and Ms. Harris’ absences from the White House while people in the Southeast suffer.

When Hurricane Helene made landfall on Friday, Mr. Biden was at his beach house in Delaware. Ms. Harris attended two celebrity-filled fundraisers in California where tickets cost as much as $1 million.

Mr. Biden got defensive earlier this week when pressed about monitoring the hurricane’s fallout from his Delaware vacation home.

Upon returning to the White House, Mr. Biden didn’t adjust his public schedule and attended an event to honor the U.S. Paralympics Team.

“It’s called a telephone,” Mr. Biden snapped after he was asked Monday why he and Ms. Harris weren’t commanding the storm response from Washington.

Ms. Harris, on a West Coast campaign swing over the weekend, canceled a meeting with small-business owners in Las Vegas scheduled for Monday afternoon but stayed long enough to hang out with Stevie Wonder, Jessica Alba, Lily Tomlin and other Hollywood elites on Sunday in Los Angeles.

Combined, the fundraisers in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised $55 million for her campaign.

Cabinet officials such as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas were missing in action. Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell was the only top administration official in the devastated region.

Food, water and other necessities remain scarce in hard-hit Asheville, North Carolina, and those who remain say they haven’t seen federal workers in the roughly one week since the storm hit.

“We are not getting the amount of support that we need right now. There are way more people impacted, way more people missing [and] definitely, unfortunately, way more people that are going to be found dead in the coming days,” a man who lives in the area told Fox News.

Scott Jennings, a CNN political analyst, said the optics from the administration have been “pretty poor.”

“These people are devastated and struggling, but you’ve got Biden at the beach,” he said on CNN.

“You’ve got Biden at the beach then saying, ‘What do you want from me? I got on the phone while I was at the beach,’” he said. “You’ve got Harris out raising money on the campaign and then taking a photo on a plane.”

The photo of Ms. Harris, released Monday, was widely panned online because her headphones were unplugged and the papers in front of her appeared blank.

Some conservatives compared the Biden-Harris response to President George W. Bush’s decision to remain at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, flooding New Orleans.

Mr. Bush didn’t return to the White House until Sept. 1 and arrived in Mobile, Alabama, to tour the damage in less time than it took for Mr. Biden to visit South Carolina.

On Wednesday, Mr. Biden said it was essential to delay his visit until the appropriate time to not interfere with the recovery effort.

Steven Greene, a politics professor at North Carolina State University, said he doesn’t think the situation will rise to the level of what unfolded in 2005 when Mr. Bush praised his FEMA chief for doing a “heck of a job” even though things weren’t going well.

“This will not be Katrina in terms of political impact on leaders,” Mr. Greene said. “Most notably, I think the government itself and politicians learned from Bush’s mistake.”

Swing states affected

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are falling short. He is carrying out a parallel effort to show leadership in the recovery.

He arrived in Georgia on Monday with truckloads of supplies and authorized a GoFundMe page for storm recovery efforts that raised more than $4 million as of Wednesday.

Mr. Trump also endorsed the distribution of satellite internet systems from Starlink in hard-to-reach parts of North Carolina. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, the company owned by Elon Musk, a Trump supporter and the world’s richest man.

“So badly needed in North Carolina, where there is virtually no communication,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Starlink was the perfect answer, and Elon Musk, as usual, came through.”

Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris insisted Wednesday that the federal government will not abandon those impacted by the storm. The president said the federal government would cover 100% of the cost of debris removal and emergency measures for six months.

The announcement received applause at an operational briefing on the storm recovery in Raleigh, the state capital.

Mr. Biden’s aerial tour of western North Carolina revealed flattened houses and the shells of gutted-out buildings in and around Asheville, which is in the Blue Ridge Mountains far west of the capital.

“I’m here to say the United States, the nation, has your back,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re not leaving until you’re back on your feet completely.”

Ms. Harris delivered a similar message in Augusta, Georgia.

“My final point to the residents of this community and the region is that we are here for the long haul,” said Ms. Harris, standing in front of a house where massive trees had fallen across the lawn.

“There is the work that we have done together that was the immediate responsible preparation for and then the immediate response after,” she said. “But there’s a lot of work that’s going to need to happen over the coming days, weeks and months and the coordination that we have dedicated ourselves to will be long-lasting.”

While in Georgia, Ms. Harris received a briefing about recovery efforts and updated state officials on federal actions supporting the emergency response.

Officials from both parties are linking arms to help North Carolina and Georgia, but politics is looming in the background. The states are battlegrounds that will award a combined 32 electoral votes and could determine who occupies the White House for the next four years.

The president met with people on the ground in Raleigh, which is more favorable political terrain for Democrats, while his flyover involved more Republican-leaning counties.

“When we talk about the political dynamics of the Helene-impacted counties in North Carolina, we’re describing a more Republican, more rural, older, and more-White voter population that is ultimately about 17% of both the registered voters and actual votes cast [in North Carolina] in the 2020 election,” Michael Bitzer, director of the Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service at Catawba College, wrote in a recent blog post.

He said the political fallout from the storm is difficult to predict.

Previous storms, such as Hurricane Matthew in 2018, caused dips in election turnout, and the Republican-led General Assembly will be under pressure to deliver aid and earn kudos from impacted areas.

“Both the administration’s response, along with the General Assembly, and the Republican nature of the counties impacted, may cancel each other out in the end,” Mr. Greene said. “But we need to continue to watch what both the presidential and state-level dynamics are like, along with what the 25 counties may request in aid and support to administer their elections, considering the extensive damage they have.”