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. For Mr. Obama, the turn to disaster management paid a surprising political dividend when he won praise on Tuesday from New Jersey Gov. "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. 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.  Mitt Romney and President Obama will re-emerge on the presidential trail on Wednesday, but in starkly different ways. 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."
– 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.