HAMBURG, Iowa (AP) – Washington Gov. Jay Inslee recently toured this waterlogged town near the Missouri River, blasting President Donald Trump as complicit in the flooding that has plagued large swaths of western Iowa in recent weeks.
“We have a president who says that climate change is a hoax,” said Inslee, who has centered his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign around the consequences of a warming planet. “He has diminished the ability of the federal government to protect its citizens, and that’s an outrage.”
Inslee is virtually alone among his fellow presidential contenders in touring sections of Iowa devastated by flooding. Although there are more than a dozen declared candidates in the race for the White House, only Inslee and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar have visited the flooded sections.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand will visit the area on Wednesday and participate in a Senate committee field hearing on the issue.
Most of the other contenders make passing mention of the flooding at campaign events, expressing their condolences to victims and emphasizing the need to combat climate change or invest in infrastructure. But the relative silence from other candidates highlights the bind many of them are in as local issues and presidential politics collide in the nation’s leadoff caucus state.