Bush famously thanked Brown for his handling of the disaster relief. 'Brownie': Obama played race card

The former Bush administration official who headed Hurricane Katrina disaster relief said Wednesday that President Barack Obama played “the race card” with his 2007 speech about the Bush administration’s response.

Michael Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, harshly criticized then-Sen. Obama’s remarks to a black audience at Hampton University, where Obama railed against a double standard for federal relief efforts in New Orleans.


( Also on POLITICO: What's old and new in Obama's tape)

“I call total BS on the President’s comments about Katrina,” Brown told POLITICO in an email. “He needs to get his facts straight and stop playing the race card with Katrina.”

Brown added, “The men and women of FEMA work tirelessly for disaster victims regardless of race, political affiliation or any other category he wants to lump people into.”

( See also: 10 facts about the Katrina response)

In his address five years ago, Obama attacked the government’s delay in waiving a federal requirement for relief and reconstruction for Katrina victims, as it had been for other disasters. The federal Stafford Act — which governs the distribution of disaster relief dollars — requires states and localities to match about 10 percent of the funds they received, which was waived quickly after Sept. 11. It wasn’t waived for Katrina until about nine months after the hurricane struck.

“Not only did we waive the state/local share for Ground Zero after 9/11, we also did the same for the Hurricane Katrina disaster,” Brown wrote.

Bush famously thanked Brown for his handling of the disaster relief, saying, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

( Also on POLITICO: Media gives little play to Obama 2007 tape)

Obama campaign insiders told POLITICO that privately the video has created some tension just hours before the first presidential debate in Denver tonight. The Romney campaign said this morning that they had no part in pushing the video.

“Voters have to look at that video and make up their mind on that individually,” Romney adviser Kevin Madden said on CBS’s “This Morning.”