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 ||||| Mitt Romney and President Obama will re-emerge on the presidential trail on Wednesday, but in starkly different ways. 
 
 Romney will hold a trio of events in the swing state of Florida with prominent Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioOvernight Defense: Senate passes 0B defense bill | 3,000 US troops heading to Afghanistan | Two more Navy officials fired over ship collisions Senate passes 0B defense bill Trump bets base will stick with him on immigration MORE (Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 
 
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 Obama will also appear with a prominent Republican: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who will be giving the president a tour of the damage in his state in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. 
 
 The president returns to the road on Thursday with campaign stops in Green Bay, Wis., Boulder, Colo., and Las Vegas, according to the Obama campaign. 
 
 
 
 The divergent paths underscore the challenge both campaigns have faced in recent days, trying to best balance the demands of a presidential race and the need to project the appropriate sensitivity as the Eastern Seaboard grapples with the aftermath of the catastrophic storm. 
 
 Obama has a natural advantage with the power of incumbency. The White House made sure to update reporters early Tuesday morning with the president’s work on response efforts to Sandy — including his endeavors overnight — and released photos of Obama meeting with federal officials. Later in the afternoon, the president visited the Red Cross, where he declared that his “message to the federal government” was “no bureaucracy, no red tape.” On Wednesday, a White House official noted Obama had continued to receive overnight updates on recovery efforts and he will be briefed again later today on "the impacts and the extensive federal support being provided to support state and local recovery efforts." The official noted that "the President continues to direct his team to lean forward aggressively." 
 
 
 
 But Obama's day job can also hamper his reelection efforts: He hasn’t been on the campaign trail since Saturday, though he’s been able to brandish prominent surrogates like Vice President Biden and former President Clinton. 
 
 More from The Hill: 
 
 • Liberal groups push for free wireless Internet 
 
 • Calif. sends privacy warnings to app makers 
 
 • Sandy not expected to affect gas prices 
 
 • Al Gore Al GoreStop the loose talk about hurricanes and global warming Parties struggle with shifting coalitions OPINION | Midterms may provide Dems control — and chance to impeach MORE: Sandy a ‘disturbing sign of things to come 
 
 • Odd couple Christie and Obama to tour devastated NJ 
 
 • Romney proves his mettle as a candidate 
 
 • Bloomberg tells Obama not to visit New York 
 
 • Campaigns seek to score points with Jewish voters on Iran 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Romney, meanwhile, returns to the campaign trail on Wednesday after a one-day break. 
 
 The Republican candidate, sensing the need to make up ground in crucial swing states — and wary of losing momentum — will continue his aggressive campaign schedule through the final six days of the election. 
 
 But Obama will likely own the news cycle Wednesday; the images of him and Christie walking side by side could pay political dividends for the president. 
 
 The outspoken Republican governor, who gave the keynote address at this year’s GOP convention and endorsed Romney, has been effusive in his praise for the president in the aftermath of the storm. 
 
 “The federal government’s response has been great. I was on the phone at midnight again last night with the president, personally — he has expedited the designation of New Jersey as a major disaster area,” Christie told NBC News on Tuesday. 
 
 Asked by reporters if Romney might also visit the state, as had been previously rumored, Christie said he had “no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested.” 
 
 “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me,” Christie added. 
 
 Obama campaign aides said Tuesday that the president is doing what voters elected him to do and is monitoring the situation hour by hour. Those close to the campaign suggested that Obama could be back on the trail later this week, possibly as early as Thursday. 
 
 Strategists from both sides suggest that if the president’s response to the storm is seen as effective, it could buoy Obama in the campaign’s waning hours. 
 
 “Good government is gonna be good politics,” said Steve Elmendorf, who served as deputy campaign manager for John Kerry John Forbes KerryBringing the American election experience to Democratic Republic of the Congo Some Dems sizzle, others see their stock fall on road to 2020 The Hill's 12:30 Report MORE’s presidential bid. “He has to spend as much time as necessary making sure the federal government is responsive and on top of the issues in the affected states.” 
 
 Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, meanwhile, said that “as long as Obama looks like he’s at the head of the government, he’s getting some political points, too. There’s some advantage to looking as though you’re in charge.” 
 
 But the Romney campaign also looked to use the storm to display its candidate’s compassion and leadership. 
 
 At a “storm relief” event in Dayton, Ohio, Romney encouraged supporters to donate supplies that the campaign would transport to New Jersey, and helped box and load the supplies onto a moving truck. 
 
 “I appreciate your generosity. It’s part of the American spirit, the American way, to give to people in need,” Romney told the assembled crowd. 
 
 While both sides insisted their candidates were focused on the recovery efforts, strategists acknowledged that the campaigns were scrambling to strike the right tone in the storm’s aftermath. 
 
 “Both campaigns are basically going positive — maybe not in television ads, but in their speeches at public events. They can’t afford to go negative in an environment like this,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “They have to connect to voters and what they care about, and right now, that is recovering from Hurricane Sandy. So if they want to be part of the hurricane news coverage that has saturated the national news 24 hours a day, it’s a wise idea to adjust their events and their schedule.” 
 
 At the same time, political analysts acknowledged that with an election less than a week away, both Obama and Romney would need to re-engage on the campaign trail. 
 
 “The biggest risk is looking too political, but at the same time we’re six days out and the show must go on,” said O’Connell. 
 
 — This story was last updated at 9:40 a.m. on Oct. 31. 
 

– 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.