New Jersey State Governor Chris Christie, who has been hailed for his strong direction and bipartisan assessment of the White House’s Hurricane Sandy response, will tour the devastation in his home state with the Commander-in-Chief tomorrow.
Chris Christie will be meeting with Obama despite a tight election that is just seven days away, and the President has suspended all campaign activity in order to visit New Jersey tomorrow to respond to the state that has been hardest hit by Sandy’s flooding and winds.
Earlier today, President Obama addressed those affected by the storm, commenting:
“America is with you … Obviously, this is something that is heartbreaking for the entire nation.”
The New York Times was one of the first major news sources to report upon Chris Christie’s meeting with President Obama tomorrow to survey damages in New Jersey, and the paper highlighted Obama’s position on agencies like FEMA in the days following a massive disaster versus that of Mitt Romney, who recently dubbed such federal assistance to be “immoral.” The Times said:
“Mr. Christie had been one of the president’s most ardent critics until the storm’s arrival. In the last 24 hours, he has praised Mr. Obama’s leadership and the administration’s actions to speed relief resources to New Jersey … At the Red Cross, Mr. Obama said his message to officials in the federal government was ‘no bureaucracy, no red tape.’ And he said federal officials were ‘going to continue to push as hard as we can’ to provide resources to places like Newark, where there were major losses of electricity.”
Most recently, Gov. Christie tweeted:
The NJ_TRANSIT system has experienced unprecedented devastation. Service will not resume until it’s repaired, safe, & secure. #Sandy
— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) October 30, 2012
The governor has also said that the damage reported on the Jersey Shore following Sandy’s floods was “unthinkable.”