The Clinton campaign’s decision on Thursday to postpone its Florida ads on the Weather Channel underscores the difficultly in striking the right balance in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. | Getty Clinton postpones Weather Channel ads in Florida

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign said Thursday that it is asking cable systems in Florida not to run its advertisements on the Weather Channel with Hurricane Matthew bearing down on the state — after Republicans seized on the planned ads as opportunistic.

On Wednesday, POLITICO reported, as part of a larger cable-television buy in the battleground states, Clinton’s campaign had reserved airtime on the Weather Channel in a number of states, including $63,000 earmarked for Florida.

“Earlier in the week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida,” Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson said Thursday. “Less than 1 percent of those changes included the Weather Channel. We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes.”

Ratings for the Weather Channel typically spike during major events, and the potential for the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in nearly 11 years should draw more eyeballs to the channel. Both Clinton and Donald Trump have advertised on the channel earlier in the campaign, during more normal weather episodes.

Some Republicans, however, seized on the ad purchase. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called it “shameful” in a Twitter post and said the Clinton campaign was “exploiting Hurricane Matthew for political gain.”

And even after word first spread that the Clinton campaign was postponing its ad campaign, Priebus called on Clinton to “apologize for using [the] storm for votes.”

As of 2 p.m. Eastern time, Matthew was 125 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, Florida — moving toward the coast at 14 miles per hour. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 140 miles per hour, with higher gusts, making Matthew a Category-4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Hurricane conditions are expected to reach Florida’s Atlantic coast by late Thursday.

If the storm impacts Florida as forecasts indicate, both Clinton and Trump will face questions about how to continue their campaigns with part of the nation’s largest swing state working to recover from the storm’s damage. The Clinton campaign’s decision on Thursday to postpone its Florida ads on the Weather Channel underscores the difficultly in striking the right balance.

“Well, there will be a lot of people watching the Weather Channel, but I don't know if they want to see a politician talking about politics. They probably want to know about their family and friends and loved ones, so I don't know if that's smart,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CNN on Thursday. “But I lost, so who the hell am I telling her what to do?”