Wasn’t it just two or three years ago that the Mississippi flooded and a female governor (don’t remember her name) of one of those states received a call from Washington DC telling her to hold off calling out the National Guard?
I think you are remembering it backwards or perhaps you were told wrong. During Katrina, Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, refused to request Federal aid or to ask that a national emergency be declared, a necessary step for the Fed to get involved including calling out the National Guard, until she and her cronies could hash out a deal that they, not the Fed, would control the money. This caused a delay of several days which they and the media blamed on Bush.