As the ruinous force of Sandy begins to diminish, the nominal pause it created in the presidential election campaign is about to fade away. 
 
 President Barack Obama continued his detour from the campaign trail Tuesday to focus on storm response. Republican Mitt Romney set aside a planned political rally in favor of a relief event to help storm victims. Both asked supporters to make donations to the Red Cross. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Mitt Romney helped unload supplies for storm relief in Kettering, Ohio, Tuesday. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Pool/Getty Images Barack Obama spoke at Red Cross headquarters in Washington. 
 
 But a presidential campaign racing toward its conclusion next week is taking little more than a short break to acknowledge the storm's impact. 
 
 Even as Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama canceled political appearances Tuesday, the two campaigns escalated a heated exchange over Mr. Romney's suggestion that the president's auto bailout had benefited China, rather than U.S. autoworkers. With new TV ad buys, Mr. Romney and his allies also pushed to enlarge the set of competitive states to include Pennsylvania, long an elusive prize for the Republican nominees. 
 
 Mr. Romney will return to his schedule of campaign appearances Wednesday in hopes of regaining the momentum many polls showed he had built in recent weeks. Mr. Obama is scheduled to follow suit on Thursday, after more time in Washington and a tour of storm damage in New Jersey, as he juggles the political rewards and risks of focusing on the government disaster response. 
 
 Northeast states grappled with how to make sure voting next week isn't unduly affected by the storm. With widespread power outages, flooding and blocked roads, officials said they may have to move or consolidate some polling locations. Connecticut gave voters two extra days to register while Maryland said it may have to resort to paper ballots for some locations due to power outages, which could delay the vote count. 
 
 For Mr. Obama, the turn to disaster management paid a surprising political dividend when he won praise on Tuesday from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who has been a scathing critic of his presidency. 
 
 "The president has been great," Mr. Christie, who represents Mr. Romney at campaign events, said on MSNBC. "The president has been all over this and he deserves great credit." It was one of several television interviews in which Mr. Christie praised Mr. Obama, who will tour New Jersey storm damage Wednesday with the governor. 
 
 The risk for Mr. Obama is that every day he is in Washington he isn't traveling the country for campaign rallies like one in Ohio last week, when the presidential plane landed in front of thousands of ecstatic supporters. 
 
 "The president's No. 1 asset of Air Force One has now been grounded," said Scott Reed, manager of Republican Bob Dole's 1996 presidential bid. Mr. Obama's campaign uses such events to push supporters to take advantage of early voting. 
 
 Even before Mr. Romney announced he would resume campaigning Wednesday with three events in Florida, he managed to stay in the public eye in the battleground state of Ohio. He turned a planned political rally in Dayton into a relief event for storm victims. 
 
 As Mr. Romney maintained a reserved public posture, his campaign proceeded with partisan drive. The campaign's first new campaign commercial in Pennsylvania, part of a bid to expand the map of competitive battlegrounds, says the president's policies led 22 coal-fired power plants to close or be converted to another form of fuel. 
 
 Obama campaign spokesman Michael Czin responded that the ad "distorts the president's record and reeks of desperation. Under President Obama's leadership, employment in coal mining hit a 15-year high in 2011 while he's making historic investments in clean coal research and development." 
 
 Romney advisers hailed the last-minute advertising push as further evidence the president's support is eroding in unexpected places. Because 96% of Pennsylvania voters cast their ballots on Election Day, rather than through absentee or early voting, Republicans have hinted for months that the state was a prime target for a late push. 
 
 "This expansion of the electoral map demonstrates that Gov. Romney's momentum has jumped containment from the usual target states and has spread to deeper blue states that Chicago never anticipated defending," Romney political director Rich Beeson wrote in a memo widely circulated on Tuesday. 
 
 Mr. Romney's campaign would not say how much money it had budgeted for Pennsylvania, and it was still in the process of buying airtime Tuesday afternoon. 
 
 The Romney campaign and its outside allies are spending at least $4.5 million in Pennsylvania this week, according to operatives tracking the 2012 race. 
 
 The Romney allies are also buying airtime in attempts to expand the list of competitive states, spending nearly $2 million in Michigan and roughly $900,000 in Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Obama's campaign is responding in Pennsylvania, and by Tuesday afternoon had bought at least $650,000 in airtime through Election Day, as well as $290,000 in Minnesota, according to political strategists tracking the spending. The campaign also plans to match Republican advertising in Michigan, an Obama aide said. 
 
 Obama campaign manager Jim Messina dismissed the Pennsylvania ad buy as a "desperate play" by a campaign still looking for a path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. The president is holding a lead of roughly five percentage points in the state, according to an average of public-opinion surveys compiled by Real Clear Politics. And Mr. Romney has spent very little time in the state. 
 
 "Let's be very clear: The Romney campaign and its allies decision to go up with advertising in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota is a decision made out of weakness, not strength," Mr. Messina said. 
 
 Not even the emergence of unexpected battlegrounds could distract from the importance of the nine swing states that have been the focal point of this election since early last year, particularly Ohio. 
 
 The two campaigns sparred Tuesday over a TV ad the Romney camp aired in Ohio suggesting the president's auto bailout paved the way for Chrysler Group LLC, one of the beneficiaries of that federal intervention, to build Jeeps in China. 
 
 The Obama campaign called the ad misleading, releasing its own spot to push back on this latest attack. 
 
 Chrysler borrowed about $10.5 billion from the U.S. as part of its 2009 bankruptcy restructuring. In May 2011, the "new Chrysler," controlled by Fiat, repaid the last $7.1 billion it owed the government. But the U.S. Treasury department has said it is unlikely to fully recover the roughly $1.3 billion it is owed by the "old Chrysler." 
 
 In a blog post on Oct. 25, Chrysler's chief spokesman, Gualberto Ranieri, called Mr. Romney's claim a "leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats." 
 
 Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of the Fiat/Chrysler Group, waded into the controversy on Tuesday, emailing company employees to reassure them that production of Jeep sport utility vehicles won't be moved to China. Instead, he said the company will be expanding Jeep production in the U.S., while looking to produce cars in China to be sold in that market. 
 
 "Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand," Mr. Marchionne wrote. "It is inaccurate to suggest anything different." 
 
 The Romney campaign ignored the Obama campaign's criticism over its initial TV spot, airing a new radio ad that says Chrysler "plans to start making Jeeps in, you guessed it, China." 
 
 "Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry,'' the radio ad says. "But for who? Ohio or China?" 
 
 Mr. Obama canceled campaign events Wednesday in Ohio. He hasn't made a campaign appearance since Sunday. In remarks at a Red Cross relief center Tuesday, he said his message to federal relief officials is: "No bureaucracy, no red tape, get resources to where they need to be as fast as possible." 
 
 Obama aides say that there is a downside to staying off the campaign trail with so few days remaining before Election Day. But they view the pause in campaigning as more harmful to Mr. Romney, who they say is having trouble promoting his message as the nation focuses on the storm. 
 
 Mr. Obama is planning a campaign blitz in the final days, starting with scheduled campaign events Thursday in Nevada, Colorado and Ohio. On Friday he is scheduled to spend the entire day in Ohio. In supervising disaster response, Mr. Obama reinforced a campaign theme that the government plays a crucial role, and disaster relief is one of the few that enjoy bipartisan support. 
 
 "It is a welcome counterpoint to a campaign that has been anything but elevated and, on the president's side, has been devoted at least as much to making the case against Romney as making the case for himself,'' said William Galston, a political analyst who was a domestic policy aide to President Bill Clinton. 
 
 —Sara Murray, Carol E. Lee, Danny Yadron, Mark 
 
 Peters, Douglas Belkin 
 
 and Christina Rogers contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Janet Hook at janet.hook@wsj.com ||||| New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looks on at a campaign rally for U.S. Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut in Stamford, Connecticut, October 22, 2012. 
 
 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Saturday said he has ordered county clerks to open their offices on Saturday and Sunday to allow early voting for residents affected by superstorm Sandy. 
 
 The storm devastated the eastern part of the state, leaving at least 22 dead and more than 1 million customers still without power just three days before the presidential election on Nov 6. 
 
 Christie said New Jersey residents could get their early voting done over the weekend at the county clerk's office because he ordered the offices to stay open in every county in the state over the weekend. 
 
 "Time on your hands? Tired of cleaning stuff up? Go there in person, you'll get a ballot, you vote and hand it in and you're done," he said in a press briefing from the town of Little Ferry. 
 
 The governor also said paper ballots would be made available on Election Day, Tuesday, allowing people to vote "old school" at polling stations that still do not have power. The National Guard will protect trucks set up at these makeshift polling stations to enable voting, he said. 
 
 For those who are not sure where to vote on Election Day, Christie said that beginning on Tuesday morning, residents can send a text message to 877877 with their address and will immediately receive a response with their polling location. 
 
 "There's no reason why anybody shouldn't vote. We're going to have a full, fair, transparent, open voting process," Christie said. 
 
 He also said the state will soon have more than 11,000 utility workers on the job of restoring power. Nearly 1.3 million New Jersey electricity customers, about one third of the state, remained without power as of Saturday, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 
 
 The Federal Emergency Management Agency will soon be working with those who are likely to be long-term evacuees, many from the New Jersey shore's hard-hit barrier islands, to find temporary housing outside of emergency shelters, Christie said. 
 
 The governor also said he has ordered the natural gas systems shut off on many of the barrier islands hit by the storm because of the fire hazard they pose. 
 
 (Reporting by Dan Burns and Liana B. Baker; Editing by Jackie Frank and Eric Walsh)
– With Election Day less than a week away, President Obama and Mitt Romney are preparing to get back on the campaign trail—or at least those parts of it not flooded by superstorm Sandy. Romney resumes his campaign schedule today with three rallies in Florida, while Obama will start campaigning again tomorrow after spending time in Washington and viewing storm damage in New Jersey today, reports the Wall Street Journal. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he turned down Obama's request to visit the storm-battered city, but he stresses the move was not a "diss," reports Politico. The mayor praised FEMA's response and the level of cooperation between city, state, and federal governments. But Obama's visit to New Jersey could pay political dividends, the Hill notes. Republican Gov. Chris Christie has praised the president's handling of the disaster, saying the president "has been all over this and he deserves great credit." Asked whether Romney would also visit the state, Christie said he had "no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested," adding that "if you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me." In Ohio, the swing state considered most likely to decide the election, fears that the storm would seriously disrupt early voting have not come to pass, the Washington Post reports. Only one county reported a power outage at its early-voting site yesterday, and several key counties say that as the storm approached, early voting was at its busiest since voting began.