US President Barack Obama raced back to the White House yesterday ahead of Hurricane Sandy, which threw election endgame plans into turmoil just one week before he asks Americans for a second term.
Democrat Obama ditched plans to appear with ex-president Bill Clinton in Florida to steer a huge government relief effort as high winds and torrential rains began to lash the northeastern United States.
Millions of people faced the prospect of damage from snapping trees, severe flooding and power outages, including in some key swing states like Virginia, where Sandy's "October Surprise" may have an unpredictable electoral impact.
Grabbing a chance to leverage the built-in advantages of incumbency, Obama made clear his focus, until Sandy had barreled through, was the safety of Americans, not his own immediate political fate.
"Obviously my first priority has to be to make sure that everything is in place for families," the president told campaign workers in Florida late Sunday.
"That's going to be putting a little bit more burden on folks in the field, because I'm not going to be able to campaign quite as much over the next couple of days."
The president had been due to appear in Florida, Ohio and Virginia with the popular former Democratic president on Monday, and also scotched plans to head west to Colorado, another swing state, on Tuesday.