New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, often known for a combative and aggressive manner, put aside partisanship for the moment and praised President Barack Obama’s preparation for Hurricane Sandy.

“I appreciate the president’s outreach today in making sure that we know he’s watching this and is concerned about the health and welfare and safety of the people of the state of New Jersey,” Christie said to the Star-Ledger.

Christie spoke as he returned to the Garden State after campaigning for Mitt Romney.

“I thank the president for his telephone call and inquiring about how things are going here and I assured him that things were going well so far. He advised me to call him at anytime if things were not going well.”

While Romney has kept his past support for defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency quiet as the Eastern Seaboard braced for record damage, the GOP candidate did make his intentions clear during the Republican debates early in the 2012 election process. When asked by moderator John King if he would defund FEMA even in the event of a national disaster, Romney replied:

“Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

Romney added that keeping emergency relief in the government budget is “immoral” and that it makes “no sense at all,” according to Forbes.

Christie, while loyally supporting Romney, wasn't having any talk of cutting FEMA.

“You want to figure out budget cuts, that’s fine,” Christie said. “You’re going to turn it into a fiasco like that debt-limit thing where you’re fighting with each other for eight or nine weeks and you expect the citizens of my state to wait? They’re not gonna wait, and I’m going to fight to make sure that they don’t.”

Barack obama New Jersey Hurricane