Obama Cancels Campaigning to Monitor Sandy

A strengthening Hurricane Sandy disrupted the race for the White House Monday, with President Obama cancelling two of his precious waning campaign days to get Air Force One safely back to Washington and monitor the storm.

Obama rushed out of battleground Florida ahead of a planned noon rally to beat the worst of the weather system bearing down on the East Coast. As he was in midair, the White House announced that Tuesday’s trip to Green Bay, Wis., also was off.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney announced he also would curtail his campaign schedule as Sandy bears down on the eastern seaboard, canceling planned appearances Monday night and all day Tuesday. Campaign officials said vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan would scrap his campaign rallies during the same time frame. Romney intends to go ahead with speeches today in Ohio and Iowa before he begins observing his self-imposed storm-related moratorium on campaigning.

              

Obama, mindful of his need to show command in crisis while in the final throes of a tough re-election campaign, met with federal emergency officials Sunday before flying to Florida that night ahead of a rally scheduled for Monday.

But the intensifying storm heading to the East Coast took priority, with the president signing emergency declarations for New England states in the middle of the night from his Orlando hotel room. By dawn the White House decided to call off the politicking.

“Due to deteriorating weather conditions in the Washington area, the president will not attend today’s campaign event in Orlando,” spokesman Jay Carney said in a written statement. “The president will return to the White House to monitor the preparations for and early response to Hurricane Sandy.”

About an hour after the statement went out, Obama slipped into his black armored limousine and his motorcade sped toward the airport under sunny Florida skies. The president jogged up the steps, and Air Force One quickly lifted off for the two-hour flight to Washington. Most of the White House press corps was left behind after the pilots of their separate chartered plane determined it was unsafe to follow Air Force One back.

Obama’s aides considered moving the Orlando event even earlier Monday morning but were told that would put Air Force One back too late to land safely. Nearly all commercial flights had already been canceled in the Washington area as heavy rains soaked the capital ahead of Sandy’s expected landfall Monday night.

With eight days before Election Day, neither campaign could afford to fully shut down its political activity in a race that remains tight. Four critical election states are affected by the storm — North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire — but there was still unthreatened ground to cover across the rest of the country.

While the impact of the storm had yet to be seen, at the very least it was a distraction as both sides were looking to make their final appeals and millions of ballots were already being cast in early voting. It threatened to dilute Romney’s efforts to close the deal with voters while giving Obama a platform to show leadership in the time of crisis. And power outages could end up cutting off their message in television ads and automatic phone calls in the eastern swing states.

Romney was staying far from campaign battlegrounds in the path of the storm, and concentrating on interior states seen increasingly as critical to his chances at the presidency. But another type of storm was awaiting him in Ohio.

The United Auto Workers announced recently a deal with Ford that promises to create 600 new jobs in nearby Brook Park, and keep 1,800 jobs in Avon Lake. The Avon Lake jobs are the product of Ford moving its commercial truck business from Mexico to Ohio.

The development not only gives Obama a chance to stoke his call for returning jobs to the U.S. from overseas, but reminds voters in auto-heavy Ohio of the auto bailout that Romney opposed.