Sandy disrupts campaigns; impact on race too early to tell

Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said Sunday afternoon that campaign workers in Virginia "are doing as much as they can to help with relief efforts."

The former Massachusetts governor and the president have already canceled stops in Virginia, a pivotal swing state expected to be hard hit. Vice President Joe Biden canceled a Saturday event in Virginia and one scheduled for Monday in New Hampshire. Both campaigns cited a desire not to use resources better targeted toward pre-storm preparations.

Ann Romney, who was slated to campaign in New Hampshire on Monday, canceled her events, and the Romney campaign said the bus that was to be used for her visit would instead be deployed for "relief efforts throughout the East Coast." Both campaigns said they were suspending fundraising e-mails to supporters in Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.

Obama canceled trips to the battlegrounds of Ohio and Colorado to stay in Washington and monitor the oncoming storm, though a campaign trip to Florida remained on the president's schedule for Monday.

Romney is scheduled to campaign in Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin on Monday, then in Ohio on Tuesday. A Romney campaign stop scheduled for Tuesday in New Hampshire was canceled late Sunday afternoon, the campaign announced in an e-mail.

Madden said the campaign would continue to update Romney's calendar, based on where the storm goes.

"The schedule we have locked down for now are in states that are not directly impacted by the storm," he said. "But, again, we're going to continue to update it. We're going to continue to monitor the situation and stay in close contact with folks that are in the states that have the best information."

This is the second time the campaign has been affected by a major weather event. Hurricane Isaac forced the cancellation of the first day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, in August.

Asked whether the Romney campaign felt snake-bitten by Mother Nature, Madden said, "Well, there's certain things we can't control and nature's one of them. So we just try to have focus on what we can control and part of what we can control is making sure that safety is a priority for the people that are in harm's way in some of these states that are going to be directly impacted and so that's a top concern and it'll remain a top concern."

While the political experts navigated the ramifications of the storm, at least one campaign had more practical matters in mind. Tim Kaine, the Democratic Senate candidate in Virginia, e-mailed supporters to ask them to take their yard signs down during the storm, lest they become projectiles.