TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, both heavily invested in presidential campaigning in the swing state of Florida, abruptly changed their plans Thursday as Hurricane Matthew threatened to wreak havoc along the state's eastern coast.
The campaigns rushed to move staff members and volunteers, close offices and cancel events in the path of the storm. And as many Floridians heeded calls to evacuate, both candidates faced the delicate task of pursuing votes during a crisis.
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Clinton's campaign asked the state for more time to register voters, and the Trump team pulled its negative television ads.
"It looks like it's a big one and it's going to be a bad one," said Trump at a town-hall-style meeting in Sandown, N.H. "Please know that we are praying for you and everyone in the path: You've got to take care of yourself, you've got to get out of the area, you've got to listen."
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The hurricane is expected to hit Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Campaign spokesman Hope Hicks said, "Mr. Trump spoke with employees yesterday to ensure they are safe and following instructions from local officials."
Clinton tweeted: "Hurricane Matthew is a major storm. ... Stay safe Florida."
Both candidates stayed far away from Florida, preparing for their second debate, a town-hall-style face-off Sunday in St. Louis. Clinton spoke Thursday at fundraisers in New York.
Trump made it clear that Thursday's town-hall meeting wasn't a practice run for Sunday's debate.
"This has nothing to do with Sunday. We're here because we just wanted to be here. Hillary, frankly, they're talking about debate prep -- that's not debate prep. She's resting. I want to be with the American people," Trump told an invited audience of 300 people.
Along the Southeast coast, Matthew was expected to create dangerous conditions in Georgia, South Carolina and, possibly, North Carolina. But it was the impact on vote-rich Florida, a must-win state for Trump, that had the campaigns on high alert. The hurricane closed in just as both sides ramped up their early-vote push and just days before a voter registration deadline.
Vote-by-mail ballots are being sent to voters across the state this week, leaving the potential for ballots arriving just as voters temporarily evacuate from their homes. As of Thursday afternoon, a record 2.5 million people -- nearly one-third of those who voted in 2012 -- have filed requests for the early ballots.
Jackie Schutz, a spokesman for Florida Gov. Rick Scott, said officials would not consider extending Sunday's registration deadline -- as Clinton requested -- while dealing with the storm. "Right now our No. 1 focus is protecting life," Schutz said. "There will be another day for politics."
Scott, a strong backer of Trump, suggested earlier in the week that he didn't think an adjustment would be necessary.
Officials said they were hoping that any disruption to voting would be less severe than with "superstorm" Sandy, which struck New Jersey and New York just before the 2012 presidential election and kept many voters away from polls.
At least half of Florida voters typically cast ballots early, either by mail or in person, compared with just a fraction in New York and New Jersey.
Still, disruptions in Florida campaigning were immediate.
In Palm Beach County, local Republican Chairman Michael Barnett said Matthew had forced cancellations, including phone-banking operations and an event where Trump's daughter Ivanka was the headliner. Area GOP officials also will miss an opportunity for outreach to Hispanic leaders because an annual gala of a local Hispanic civic group was canceled.
"There is no good time, but this is just the worst time," Barnett said. "Whatever happens, I think we can make up for the lost time, as long as we are not cleaning ourselves out from under a catastrophic mess."
Democrats, too, prepared for high-power campaigning to grind to a halt in affected areas. Television advertising often fails to reach voters preoccupied by impending storms and the storms' aftermath.
"Even if you want to do politics, no one is there to listen," said Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who directed Barack Obama's 2008 Florida campaign and was an adviser for his re-election efforts in the state.
How and where to advertise became an immediate flash point for the campaigns. After Clinton ads were spotted on the Weather Channel, the Trump campaign accused her of a "tone deaf" attempt to capitalize on the situation.
A Clinton spokesman said ads had been scheduled on regional Weather Channel stations in Florida and other states. But the storm's potential severity prompted the campaign to cancel the Florida portion.
Trump transition team
In Washington, leaders of Trump's transition team are to meet today with technology lobbyists to seek their input on policy, capping a string of sessions with the Washington establishment.
Lobbyists and representatives for the Consumer Technology Association, Uber, the Motion Picture Association of America and other tech trade groups were invited to a Friday morning meeting at the law firm Baker Hostetler in Washington. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of the Trump transition team, is expected to attend.
It is the third policy-oriented meeting initiated in the past month by the Trump transition team to solicit input from industry lobbyists. The previous two focused on the financial services and energy sectors, according to people with knowledge of the meetings.
Many GOP lobbyists are planning to attend the meeting despite any personal distaste for Trump or plans not to vote for him -- showing that K Street is begrudgingly accepting the possibility of working with a Trump White House, a notion they scoffed at not long ago.
"It's the first time I'm not voting for a Republican," said one GOP lobbyist who was invited to a transition meeting but didn't want to speak on the record for fear of alienating Trump's team. "But at the same time, I'm a Republican lobbyist. It's my job. I still have a job to do, to do due diligence and get to know these people."
Republican lobbyists expressed what could be termed as a resigned sense of duty in describing why they agreed to meet with the GOP presidential nominee's transition team. If Trump wins the White House, he will need to expand his small circle of advisers to more experienced hands who could help him implement his agenda in Washington.
Republicans are much less excited about meeting with Trump's team than Democratic lobbyists seem to be about meeting with former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, chairman of the Clinton transition.
"You have Democrats clamoring to meet with Salazar," said another Republican lobbyist, who also did not want to speak on the record. "On the Republican side, it's like, 'I know I should, but should I really?' We have to come through these larger crisis of conscience decisions."
If Trump is serious about making policy changes, meeting with lobbyists is part of learning how the government operates, said GOP lobbyist Rick Hohlt, who's been involved in every Republican transition since 1980.
"If he's serious, he needs to talk to the people who know how the place runs," Hohlt said. "You want to gather the information just like if you were doing any kind of project. You need to build the three-ring binder. Who knows more about the three-ring binder? The people on the Hill, the people downtown. The lobbyists provide the information and knowledge base."
A number of lobbyists already are involved in the Trump campaign and transition. Mike Catanzaro, a partner at the lobby firm CGCN, is leading the transition's energy policy team. Christine Ciccone, a lobbyist who was a top official for Jeb Bush's 2016 campaign, was secured by the Trump transition team in recent weeks, as was Eric Ueland, a top staff member for the Senate Budget Committee and former vice president of the lobby firm Duberstein Group.
Some GOP lobbyists are skeptical about how seriously their input on substantive policy issues will be considered by the unconventional candidate, noting that invitations also included language soliciting donations of $5,000. Christie has said his goal is to raise $2 million for the transition, and is said to be about halfway there, CNN reported.
Many Republican lobbyists are maintaining communications with the transition staff out of a sense of obligation to their party and their job -- clients are pressing their hired guns to not just advocate for them on Capitol Hill, but also with transition staff members in case Trump wins.
The technology meeting, first reported in Politico, is expected to be well-attended despite many technology lobbyists' reservations about Trump. It "will be an inside look at the work underway on planning for the transition," according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen, Steve Peoples, Jill Colvin, Julie Bykowicz, Bill Barrow, Ken Thomas, Lisa Lerer and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; by Catherine Ho of The Washington Post; and by Kevin Cirilli and Terrence Dopp of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/07/2016