Mitt Romney, a challenger without the trappings and authority of office to respond to the crisis, has scheduled what his campaign called a "storm-relief event" here in the same location where he was previously set to hold a traditional campaign rally. The celebrity guests scheduled to appear will also be at the storm-relief event. As the crowd gathered, a long campaign video for Mr. Romney played on a giant screen, describing the candidate as a "charismatic" and "authentic." A woman in the audience held up a T-shirt that said "Obama, you're fired."
His aides, sensitive to the image of the Republican nominee engaged in electioneering when cities across the East Coast are flooded, said Mr. Romney would make no political remarks. Attendees are being asked to bring canned food, which will be shipped off to areas damaged by the torrential storm.
Yet the event means that Mr. Romney would still appear on television, as a candidate, after his aides said they would cancel "all events currently scheduled" for Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, on Tuesday out of sensitivity to the storm's victims. On local television here Tuesday morning, an Ohio Republican official said the event was "not a campaign event per se."
President Obama has withdrawn from the campaign trail and will spend his day at the White House where he will conduct briefings and survey the impact of the severe weather, aides said. But, he too, may speak to the country as both a president and a candidate, two roles that are inextricably linked at this late stage in the campaign. The White House said the president spent much of the night Monday monitoring the storm's impact and talking with elected leaders throughout the affected region.
Mr. Obama earned repeated praise on Tuesday from an unlikely source: Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey and one of Mr. Romney's top surrogates. In several appearances on morning news programs, he called Mr. Obama's efforts for his state "wonderful," "excellent" and "outstanding."
"It's been very good working with the president," Mr. Christie said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "He and his administration have been coordinating with us. It's been wonderful."
Speaking about the damage to his state on NBC's "Today" show, Mr. Christie called the president "outstanding" and said the response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. had been "excellent."
In a Twitter message from his official account, Mr. Christie said he wanted to "thank the president personally for all his assistance" as New Jersey recovers from the storm."
The effusive comments about the president from Mr. Christie come after Mr. Christie has spent weeks criticizing the president and his leadership on behalf of Mr. Romney's campaign. Some Republicans on Tuesday privately expressed frustration that Mr. Christie went as far as he did in thanking Mr. Obama a week before the election.
The effects of the storm are being felt in Ohio, where wind gusts of 60 miles per hour were reported Tuesday morning in the central part of the state, along with scattered power outages and school closings. The banner headline of the Columbus Dispatch said, "A Storm For The Ages."
But even as the candidates altered their campaigning, their dueling television commercials were roaring along on Tuesday. The campaigns and their third-party allies are making a final push on already saturated airwaves with millions of dollars worth of new commercials. A "super PAC" backing Mr. Romney's campaign began broadcasting a new ad in eight states that features a woman expressing disappointment about Mr. Obama's first term in office. Another released two ads across the battleground states criticizing Mr. Obama's handling of the economy.
Mr. Obama's campaign continued to broadcast ads criticizing Mr. Romney's economic proposals and promoting the president's plans for a second term. Ads by Mr. Obama's campaign also urged people to vote early.
Representatives for the candidates are still planning to hold campaign rallies on Tuesday. Former President Bill Clinton stood in for Mr. Obama in Florida on Monday and planned to press ahead with three stops in Iowa on Tuesday. Mr. Romney's wife, Ann, will attend a "victory rally" in Iowa after making a stop at a storm-related event in Wisconsin.
With a razor-close election just seven days away, each camp confronted the same quandary: whether pressing ahead in campaigning would earn them the votes they needed to win or whether it would be seen as crass, unpresidential behavior at a time of power failures, flooding and mass evacuations.
Both sides reached a similar conclusion after holding urgent discussions among their top advisers — talks that included up-to-the-minute weather updates and airings of logistical concerns about the dangers of air travel. Within hours of each other, the campaigns suspended appearances by their candidates at least through Tuesday.
Mr. Obama, shouldering the responsibilities of a sitting president, acted first, abandoning a planned Florida rally to fly back to the White House on Monday morning. In a statement after a Situation Room briefing with emergency response officials, Mr. Obama said that the election "will take care of itself next week. Right now our No. 1 priority is that we're saving lives."
Just before noon, Mr. Romney's campaign announced that it, too, had decided to cancel the candidate's scheduled events, including one in Wisconsin on Monday night and his entire schedule on Tuesday, "out of sensitivity for the millions of Americans in the path of Hurricane Sandy."
On Monday night, it announced the new storm-relief event in Dayton. Richard Petty, the racecar driver, and Randy Owen, the singer, will appear with Mr. Romney.
Top aides to Mr. Romney said they feared the possibility of a split-screen moment that showed Mr. Romney attacking the president next to images of flooded homes. They said canceling traditional campaign events allowed Mr. Romney to be part of the storm story, not apart from it. Both campaigns also halted fund-raising across the East Coast in favor of an appeal to donors for Red Cross contributions.
For the campaigns, the storm forced critical judgment calls as they addressed the need to campaign while being sensitive to the effects of the storm that swirled around them. Among the questions: How long will the huge storm continue to paralyze a campaign that is racing toward its conclusion?
The answer inside both campaigns appeared to be: at least through Tuesday. Still, neither side would rule out the possibility of further cancellations Wednesday or beyond. David Axelrod, the president's top strategist, said the campaign had already begun thinking about how to start rescheduling the stops that have been canceled.
"We're obviously going to lose a bunch of campaign time, but that's as it has to be, and we'll try to make it up on the back end," he told reporters on Monday.
Also on the table for both campaigns was how to deal with the grim aftermath of the storm. A visit to a ravaged area by the president would be traditional and expected, but could further interrupt Mr. Obama's campaigning. Mr. Romney's advisers said that they were discussing the possibility of Mr. Romney visiting a site damaged by the storm well after it has dissipated, but that they had not yet completed plans.
Polls released over the weekend continued to show a tight race between the two men, nationally and in some of the battleground states that will decide which one reaches 270 electoral votes. A Gallup poll of likely voters on Sunday gave Mr. Romney an edge of 51 percent to Mr. Obama's 46 percent.
Inside his headquarters in Boston, advisers to Mr. Romney were engaged throughout the weekend in marathon conference calls about how and where to schedule his time in the midst of the storm.
Mr. Romney's aides were holding out hope throughout most of Monday morning that he could continue his full campaign schedule on Tuesday. But that changed after a 10:45 a.m. conference call among his advisers in Boston, officials at the Republican National Committee and Mr. Romney's top aides on the campaign bus in Ohio.
"There are families in harm's way that will be hurt either in their possessions or perhaps in something more severe," Mr. Romney said in brief remarks after a rally in Avon Lake, Ohio. "This looks like another time when we need to come together all across the country, even here in Ohio, and make sure that we give of our support to the people who need it."
Mr. Obama's initial decision to go to Florida on Sunday night in the face of dire weather attests to the political pressures he is facing. The president's advisers calculated that he could squeeze in one more rally in a closely fought electoral battleground by moving up the event's start time by two hours and still return to Washington in time to take charge of storm preparations. But they changed course after determining Air Force One might not be able to make the trip any later.
After returning to Washington, Mr. Obama led a meeting in the Situation Room with top emergency response officials. In his statement to reporters afterward, Mr. Obama warned Americans that "this is going to be a big storm; it's going to be a difficult storm." He added: "The great thing about America is when we go through tough times like this, we all pull together. We set aside whatever issues we may have otherwise to make sure we respond appropriately."
Storms can have a treacherous effect on the fortunes of a president, most notably in the case of Hurricane Katrina and George W. Bush in 2005. But they can also help rally support, as in final four months of the 2004 campaign, when Florida was pounded by three successive hurricanes, Charley, Frances and Ivan.
Mr. Bush was well aware of how, in 1992, the chaotic response of the government to Hurricane Andrew in Florida had hurt his father, then seeking re-election. Twelve years later, the younger Mr. Bush marshaled a more effective federal response, which some analysts said helped him secure a clearer victory in the state against Senator John Kerry than he had against Al Gore in 2000.
Michael Barbaro reported from Dayton, Ohio, and Michael D. Shear from Washington. Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Ashley Parker from Boston.
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