Obama tours storm damage, Romney mutes rhetoric

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama embraces Donna Van­zant dur­ing a tour of a neigh­bor­hood effected by super­storm Sandy Wednes­day in Brig­an­tine, N.J. Van­zant is a owner of North Point Marina, which was dam­aged by the storm. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Pablo Mar­tinez Monsivais)

DAVID ESPO

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

BRIGANTINE, N.J. — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama soberly toured the destruc­tion wrought by super­storm Sandy on Wednes­day in the com­pany of New Jersey’s Repub­li­can gov­er­nor and assured vic­tims “we will not quit” until cleanup and recov­ery are com­plete. Six days before their hard-fought elec­tion, rival Mitt Rom­ney muted crit­i­cism of Obama as he barn­stormed bat­tle­ground Florida.

For­sak­ing par­ti­san pol­i­tics for the third day in a row, the pres­i­dent heli­coptered with Gov. Chris Christie over washed-out roads, flooded homes, board­walks bob­bing in the ocean and, in Sea­side Heights, a fire still burn­ing after ruin­ing about eight structures.

Back on the ground, the pres­i­dent intro­duced one local woman to “my guy Craig Fugate.” In a plain­spo­ken demon­stra­tion of the power of the pres­i­dency, Obama instructed the man at the head of the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, a 7,500-employee fed­eral agency, to “make sure she gets the help she needs” immediately.

Despite the tour and Romney’s own expres­sions of sym­pa­thy for storm vic­tims — a break on the sur­face from heated cam­paign­ing — a con­tro­versy as heated as any in the long, intense strug­gle for the White House flared over the Repub­li­can challenger’s new tele­vi­sion and radio ads in Ohio.

“Des­per­a­tion,” Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said of the broad­cast claims that sug­gested automak­ers Gen­eral Motors and Chrysler are adding jobs in China at the expense of work­ers in the bell­wether state. “One of the most fla­grantly dis­hon­est ads I can ever remember.”

Repub­li­cans were unre­pen­tant as Rom­ney strug­gled for a break­through in the Midwest.

“Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers are on track to lose $25 bil­lion as a result of Pres­i­dent Obama’s han­dling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expand­ing their pro­duc­tion over­seas,” said an emailed state­ment issued in the name of Repub­li­can run­ning mate Paul Ryan.

The two storms — one inflicted by nature, the other whipped up by rival cam­paigns — were at oppo­site ends of a race near­ing its end in a flurry of early bal­lot­ing by mil­lions of vot­ers, unre­lent­ing adver­tis­ing and so many diver­gent polls that the result was con­fu­sion, not clarity.

National sur­veys make the race a tight one for the pop­u­lar vote, with Rom­ney ahead by a sta­tis­ti­cally insignif­i­cant point or two in some, and Obama in others.

Both sides claim an advan­tage from bat­tle­ground state sound­ings that also are tight. Obama’s aides con­tend he is ahead or tied in all of them, while Romney’s team coun­ters that his cam­paign is expand­ing in its final days into what had long been deemed safe ter­ri­tory for the pres­i­dent in Michi­gan, Penn­syl­va­nia and Minnesota.

The storm added yet another ele­ment of uncer­tainty, as Obama spent a third straight day embrac­ing his role as incum­bent and Rom­ney tried to tread lightly dur­ing a major East Coast disaster.

The pres­i­dent received a brief­ing at the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency across town from the White House before fly­ing to New Jer­sey, where the shore­line absorbed some of the worst dam­age in a storm that killed 50 and laid waste to New York City’s elec­tri­cal and trans­porta­tion systems.

Christie was wait­ing when Air Force One landed, and he and Obama, two fig­ures in blue wind­break­ers, walked together toward the president’s heli­copter to begin their tour. It was a tableau that seemed impos­si­ble a week ago — a pres­i­dent strug­gling to defend his eco­nomic record in a tight elec­tion, fly­ing off to a non-battleground state to spend the after­noon in the com­pany of the man who deliv­ered the keynote address at Romney’s Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion this summer.

Three hours later, the two men spoke of one another in glow­ing terms.

“He has sprung into action imme­di­ately,” said Christie.

Said Obama of the gov­er­nor, “He has put his heart and soul into mak­ing sure the peo­ple of New Jer­sey bounce back stronger than before.”

The storm forced an abrupt change in Romney’s cam­paign, as well.

In Tampa, the Repub­li­can chal­lenger said, “We love all of our fel­low cit­i­zens. We come together at times like this, and we want to make sure that they have a speedy and quick recov­ery from their finan­cial and, in many cases, per­sonal loss.” His crit­i­cism of Obama was glanc­ing. “I don’t just talk about change. I actu­ally have a plan to exe­cute change and make it happen.”

Rom­ney was spend­ing the full day in the state, cam­paign­ing with for­mer Gov. Jeb Bush. It was an unusual com­mit­ment of time in the final days of a close race, and an indi­ca­tion that Repub­li­cans view the state and its 29 elec­toral votes as any­thing but secure.

The debate was fero­cious over Romney’s broad­cast ads. The radio ver­sion said that after Obama’s auto bailout, Gen­eral Motors has “cut 15,000 Amer­i­can jobs, but they are plan­ning to dou­ble the num­ber of cars built in China which means 15,000 more jobs for China.

“And now comes word that Chrysler is start­ing to build cars in, you guessed it, China.”

Biden termed the ads scur­rilous. He said that exec­u­tives from Gen­eral Motors and Chrysler, which pro­duces Jeeps, had said the claims were inaccurate.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, the truth is, just recently in the last cou­ple of months, in Toledo, Ohio, not only is the Jeep plant open and churn­ing out Jeeps, they announced they’re adding 1,100 new jobs.”

Ryan’s emailed response con­ceded noth­ing. “Pres­i­dent Obama has cho­sen not to run on the facts of his record, but he can’t run from them,” it said.

His ref­er­ence to a $25 bil­lion cost to tax­pay­ers reflected the Trea­sury Department’s most recent esti­mate of the amount Gen­eral Motors and Chrysler still owe the gov­ern­ment from the financ­ing it received dur­ing a man­aged bank­ruptcy in 2009.

Ryan didn’t men­tion that the two com­pa­nies have repaid bil­lions more than that. Nor did he refer to Obama’s fre­quent claim that the administration’s bailout, which Rom­ney opposed, saved large num­bers of jobs and pre­vented the col­lapse of the U.S. auto indus­try itself.

Obama’s aides said the pres­i­dent would return to polit­i­cal travel on Thurs­day with stops in Wis­con­sin, Nevada and Col­orado. But for one more day, he was hands-on com­man­der of the fed­eral response to Sandy, and consoler-in-chief for its victims.

Obama’s New Jer­sey itin­er­ary included a com­mu­nity cen­ter in Brig­an­tine Beach that is serv­ing as a shel­ter for local storm vic­tims. Offi­cials said about 200 peo­ple were sleep­ing in the center’s gym at the height of the storm, a num­ber that has been reduced.

The polit­i­cal impact of the storm on the race was dif­fi­cult to gauge.

Obama senior adviser David Axel­rod told reporters it had “tended to freeze this race” in place because “peo­ple are focused on the storm. That’s what’s been in the news.”

Not every­one, and not all the time.

In the race’s final days, Romney’s cam­paign aired ads in Min­nesota and Penn­syl­va­nia, two states long con­sid­ered safe for the pres­i­dent. Republican’s allies are air­ing com­mer­cials in Michi­gan and New Mexico.

Obama’s aides insisted the states were safe for him, but it dis­patched for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton to Min­nesota, and pur­chased air­time in the other three states to respond to the Republicans.

Both cam­paigns invested in get-out-the-vote oper­a­tions in the run-up to Elec­tion Day.

Offi­cials in Florida said more than 2.6 mil­lion bal­lots had been cast as of Tues­day night. Democ­rats voted in slightly higher num­bers than Repub­li­cans, but nearly 450,000 vot­ers were independents.

Posted by AP News on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.