A memo obtained by NewsChannel5 from a Republican adviser in West Palm Beach, Florida says that the Democratic turnout effort is “cleaning our clock.”

The memo says, “The early and absentee turnout is starting to look more troubling.”

First Read: “Given how close this election is, it won’t be surprising if the losing side ends up blaming Sandy, whether it’s fair or not. You could argue that Sandy has both elevated the president and stopped the momentum narrative for Romney. But you could also contend that Sandy has kept the president off the campaign trail for at least three days. Just like Kerry partisans blamed bin Laden video in ’04, Bush folks blamed the DUI story in ’00 and McCain folks blamed Lehman collapse in ’08, Sandy will get the blame from the losing side, period.”

McCay Coppins reports the last-minute decision by Romney high command to suspend politics while Hurricane Sandy raged sent aides in Ohio scrambling to convert a scheduled victory rally into an apolitical “storm relief event.”

“But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it ‘did donate supplies to the relief effort,’ but would not specify how much it spent.)”

Charlie Cook notes that Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, “which once looked like they were slipping more into the Romney orbit, have pulled back to essentially even-money contests.”

The Fix: “That conventional wisdom has led many… to conclude that Ohio is now the single most important state in the country when it comes to Mitt Romney’s electoral math. But, without Florida and Virginia, Romney may never get to the point, electorally speaking, where Ohio becomes makes or break.”

“This president is either engaged in a massive cover-up deceiving the American people or he is so grossly incompetent that he is not qualified to be the commander in chief of our armed forces. It’s either one of them.”

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by NBC News, politicizing a storm relief event in Ohio.

Washington Post: “For a day at least, Hurricane Sandy appears to have done for President Obama what he has not been able to do for himself.”

“In a campaign notable mostly for its negativity, the historic storm provided Obama with a commander-in-chief moment a week before Election Day. The president gained a rare moment of bipartisan praise, with Democratic and Republican governors alike commending the performance of the federal government. And the storm put on pause, for now, the sense that rival Mitt Romney had all the momentum in the home stretch.”

AP: “The politics of Obama’s storm response are not overt. The point is to
go the other direction and just be presidential. So gone, for three days
and counting, are the rallies in which Obama expressly asks people to
re-elect him. Instead, voters see images of Obama in charge in the
Situation Room, or addressing the country from the White House briefing
room, or assuring the hurting while visiting the American Red Cross that
‘America is with you.’ To the independent and undecided voters sick of
the mess in Washington, Obama appears bipartisan and positively
unconcerned about his own political fate.”

Mitt Romney refused to answer questions about how he would handle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after a Tuesday “storm relief” event in Ohio for Hurricane Sandy, the Huffington Post reports.

From the Romney pool report: “TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA. He ignored the qs but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the qs would have been audible to him.”

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

— GM spokesman Greg Martin, quoted by the Detroit Free Press, on Mitt Romney’s latest ad in Ohio.

A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds President Obama and Mitt Romney enter the closing week of the campaign in an exceedingly narrow race, with the president edging the challenger 48% to 47%.

“The race for the White House, which has been interrupted by the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy’s deadly assault on the East Coast, is heading toward an uncertain conclusion. The president was set to stay off the campaign trail for a third straight day to tour storm damage on Wednesday with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican. Mr. Romney was set to resume a full schedule in Florida.”

By comparison, the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll shows Romney ahead 49% to 48%.

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:

Colorado: Obama 48%, Romney 45% (Project New America)

Florida: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Newsmax/Zogby)

Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 47% (SurveyUSA)

North Carolina: Romney 50%, Obama 45% (SurveyUSA)

Ohio: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (Newsmax/Zogby)

Ohio: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (SurveyUSA)

Ohio: Obama 48%, Romney 45% (Project New America)

Virginia: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (Newsmax/Zogby)

Another state that has never been considered a swing state but appears close:

Oregon: Obama 47%, Romney 41% (Elway)

Two media-tracking sources tell Politico that Mitt Romney’s campaign has started reserving television time in Pennsylvania for the final two days of the campaign.

“The initial placements come as the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is buying over $2 million in time there, and as Crossroads is also going up with a buy over $600,000. The Obama campaign, forced to expend resources there, has responded with a defensive buy of over $600,000.”

A new Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts finds Elizabeth Warren (D) leading Sen. Scott Brown (R) by seven points, 53% to 46%.

In a September poll, Warren led Brown by four points.

Joe Klein: “Over the past week, everyone’s been asking me who’s going to win. Beats me. I really don’t know. The polls seem stalled, hilariously inconclusive…. So we’re in the quiet eye of the election. And I promise you, this thing can spin either way when we emerge. There will be a jobs report this Friday. There may be other surprises. But anyone who claims to know who is going to win is blowing smoke.”

Greg Sargent reports the Mitt Romney campaign has now put a version of his controversial television ad on the radio in Toledo, Ohio — the site of a Jeep plant. The buy is roughly $100,000.

“The move seems to confirm that the Romney campaign is making the Jeep-to-China falsehood central to its final push to turn things around in the state. The Romney campaign has explicitly said in the past that it will not let fact checking constrain its messaging, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it appears to be expanding an ad campaign based on a claim that has been widely pilloried by fact checkers.”

First Read: “Now with Sandy moving away from the East Coast, the real impact begins today — assessing the damage, realizing what happened, and the government (federal, state, and local) beginning the recovery. And this is the true high-wire act for President Obama and his administration: making sure the recovery and relief begins immediately and as smoothly as possible. Every hiccup could get amplified; that’s the real political danger for the president. Then again, he has the bully pulpit and a job to do. Already, the late-night calls to Republican Gov. Chris Christie are public (thanks to Christie, not the president, by the way).”

Mike Allen: “As the presidential campaigns gingerly navigate the post-landfall environment, Mitt Romney has the more awkward and hazardous path. President Obama has been doing his day job, has a natural platform and can command a national audience at any moment. Romney, who felt he was surfing a wave of momentum, has to find a way to keep campaigning in states that weren’t affected, without looking cheap or opportunistic. At 11 a.m., per Romney’s schedule, he ‘will attend a storm relief event at the James S. Trent Arena in Kettering, Ohio, where he will be joined by Richard Petty and Randy Owen.’ This is risky business. If Romney is as capable of presidential mien as his advisers think, it will show. The downside could be devastating.”

“Romney has to avoid anything reminiscent of one of the campaign’s most cringe-worthy moments, when Paul Ryan breezed through a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio, after the homeless patrons had left for the morning, put on a crispy-white apron and scrubbed a pot that appeared to the pool to already be clean. (Charity officials later clarified that it was dirty.) Romney has the chance to draw on his years as a Mormon bishop to show he understands tough times, and knows how to serve solemnly. But he has to resist obvious photo-opps.”

A new NPR poll shows Mitt Romney edging President Obama among likely voters nationally, 48% to 47%.

However, Obama leads by 4 percentage points, 50% to 46%, in 12 states battleground states: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.

CNN: “The candidates are seeking to balance the real threat of a killer storm against the need to squeeze out any last-minute advantages on the campaign trail. For the next few days, routine campaigning may take a back seat. This week, it may all be about who can behave the most presidential.”