Romney heads to Republican convention overshadowed by Gulf Coast storm

TAMPA, Fla. – Mitt Romney arrived in this southern Florida city on Tuesday to be crowned the party’s presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention, an event overshadowed by a fierce storm barrelling towards the Gulf Coast seven years after hurricane Katrina.

Delegates will formally affirm Romney as the party’s nominee later in the day, the agenda for which also included marquee speeches by Romney’s wife, Ann, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, and his wife, Janna, also headed to Tampa on Tuesday for the event, which started a day late because of Isaac — now a swirling hurricane packing 110-kilometre-an-hour winds and following the same ominous trajectory as Katrina.

The city of New Orleans has still not fully recovered from Katrina, which roared ashore exactly seven years ago Wednesday.

Isaac, thankfully, isn’t as mighty as Katrina; federal officials say the galvanized levees around New Orleans can withstand much stronger storms.

But convention organizers were fretting anew about the “optics” of a celebratory gathering of a party already regarded as unfeeling by some Americans while citizens in Gulf Coast states prepare for more devastation, in particular extreme flooding from storm surges.

That perception hasn’t been helped in recent days by Romney surrogate John Sununu, who griped Tuesday about the attention the media is paying to the storm.

“We aren’t talking about jobs,” said John Sununu, a Romney campaign co-chairman and former New Hampshire governor. “It’s the media that is obsessed with Mother Nature.”

A few days earlier, Sununu expressed hope that Isaac “moves as far west as he can” so that the convention wasn’t disrupted.

Media coverage of the convention, indeed, has been significantly curtailed by the hurricane. News crews outside the Tampa convention centre were asking delegates more questions about Isaac than Romney, and the all-news cable channels were consumed with the hurricane even as the presumptive nominee made his arrival in Florida.

The hurricane has already prompted Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Florida Gov. Rick Scott to cancel their planned speeches at the convention. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley also scrubbed his trip to Tampa.

Romney had not originally planned to fly to the Florida city until Thursday to accept the nomination. But his campaign says he changed his mind, opting to be on hand for his wife’s remarks on Tuesday night.

Ann Romney’s speech is expected to celebrate their 43-year marriage and is clearly aimed at humanizing a politician often perceived as socially awkward and emotionally remote.

Romney is running even with U.S. President Barack Obama — or trailing him slightly — in most public opinion polls. His campaign has been hoping for what’s known as a “bounce” in polls following the convention, particularly in crucial swing states like Florida, where the outcome of the Nov. 6 election will likely be decided.

Obama is currently slightly ahead of Romney in Florida, home to millions of senior citizens who are nervous about Ryan’s proposals to privatize Medicare, a cherished government program that provides health insurance to Americans over 65.

Romney’s campaign played down expectations of a bounce on Tuesday, pointing to the unpredictable impact of the storm and the fact that Democrats are holding their own convention next week.

“I just think all bets are off about any kind of past performance being a predictor of the future,” said Stuart Stevens, a Romney adviser.

Obama, meantime, offered words of reassurance to Gulf Coast residents as he campaigned in Iowa.

The nation will help people recover from Isaac “no matter what this storm brings,” he said.

When disaster strikes, he added, “we’re not Democrats or Republicans first, we are Americans first.”