It was six days after the worst storm in nearly a century struck Florida’s south-west coast, disfiguring seaside communities and barrier islands. Retirees who came here to spend their golden years in the sun and salt breeze were wilting. They’d gone days without electricity and clean water. A realisation was settling in that many of them were now homeless and without the means, or the years, to rebuild.

But they had Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor, a beefy former athlete, ditched his suit and tie for a rain jacket embroidered with the state seal when he arrived outside a library-turned-relief centre in Fort Myers, a city that bore the brunt of Hurricane Ian’s fury. At his elbow was his glamorous wife, Casey, a former television news anchor, with an inscrutable gaze trained on the future.

Financial Times