President Obama will have devide his time the next week over his campaign and providing help for those states and people who will need the Fedearl Governmenets help…..
With 10 days to go until Election Day, President Obama stuck to his plans Saturday and exhorted supporters at a rally here to help him win this state’s tiny but potentially significant four Electoral College votes.
But the big question facing the Obama campaign this weekend concerned science as much as math: how is the president supposed to campaign in the middle of what is being billed as possibly the biggest storm to hit the mid-Atlantic in years?
With Hurricane Sandy heading toward a collision with an early winter storm and expected to reach the East Coast late Sunday, Mr. Obama, more than his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, must figure how to marshal the government’s response while also rallying votes ahead of the Nov. 6 elections. It is a delicate balance, made more so by the fact that some of the swing states necessary to Mr. Obama’s re-election hopes — Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire — are in the storm’s projected path.
Even while Obama officials were making plans to reschedule the president’s campaign travels so that he can get ahead of the storm — for example, Mr. Obama will fly to Florida on Sunday night instead of Monday — the White House was trying to project an image of a president working to prepare the East Coast for the storm.
Aboard Air Force One en route to New Hampshire on Saturday, Mr. Obama held a conference call with Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other top officials to get an update on Sandy. The day before, Mr. Obama had directed Mr. Fugate “to ensure that all available federal resources are being brought to bear to support state and local responders in potentially affected areas along the eastern seaboard,” the White House said in an e-mail to reporters.
The storm could hold repercussions for both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, particularly if it inhibits voter turnout in crucial states. In Ohio in particular, the Obama campaign has been counting on its field operation to urge people to vote early, with buses taking voters to the polls after Obama rallies in the state. Republicans, for their part, have been pushing their own early-vote efforts in Virginia, hoping that Mr. Romney can get a head start in vote tallies there.
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