SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. presidential campaign picks up again Monday after President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney paused their attacks for the weekend while the nation tried to absorb a horrific mass shooting at a Colorado theater.
For a few days, the massacre silenced the bitter charge and counter-charge that had come to define the increasingly heated contest for the White House. Now Obama and Romney are moving delicately back into full campaign mode, weighing how soon to resume their ferocity or whether to temper the tenor of the contest for the nation’s highest office.
“There’s not a playbook for this,” said Jen Psaki, Obama’s campaign spokeswoman. “Just like everybody, we’re taking this day by day.”
The shooting also put fresh focus on the issue of gun control, which has played virtually no role in a race focused on the economy.
Psaki said it was “too early to say” whether Obama would propose any new gun control policies.
Both campaigns were keeping their largely negative television advertisements off the air in Colorado, a key battleground state in the November election that portends as the closest in recent memory.
The Obama campaign said it would not advertise in Colorado for the rest of the week. Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the Republican’s ads in the state would not return until at least Tuesday.
The campaigns took their ads off television Friday after the shootings left 12 dead and dozens injured. The candidates and their surrogates also canceled campaign events and media interviews for much of the weekend.
Romney made a low-key return to political activity Sunday night in California, where he courted Republican donors at three fundraisers. Romney told supporters he would tone down his political rhetoric, at least for the night, in “keeping with the seriousness of the day.” The former Massachusetts governor avoided attacking Obama by name.
Obama on Sunday visited Aurora, Colorado, the site of the shooting. He spent nearly three hours in emotional private meetings with the families of the dead and met with some of those injured.
“I hope that over the next several days, next several months, we all reflect on how we can do something about some of the senseless violence that ends up marring this country,” Obama said.
Romney said Obama’s trip was “the right thing for the president to be doing on this day.”
From Colorado, Obama flew to San Francisco to start a previously scheduled three-day trip that includes a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nevada, campaign fundraisers in California, Oregon and Washington state, and a speech to the National Urban League convention in New Orleans.
But the campaign cancelled a rally planned for Portland, Oregon. Officials said they felt the tone of the larger event would be inappropriate.
Like Obama, Romney was to return to campaigning in earnest Monday, with a roundtable discussion with small business leaders and a fundraiser in California.
Much of Romney’s week will be focused on America’s role abroad. He’ll deliver a foreign policy-focused speech at the VFW convention Tuesday. The next day he will launch his first trip abroad as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. He’s expected to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in London and meet with foreign dignitaries in England, Israel and Poland.
The Obama campaign, trying to overcome the weak U.S. economy, had pounding Romney’s business record and financial secrecy. Led by Obama himself, the campaign has pushed the wealthy Romney to release more of his personal tax returns and raised questions about whether his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital that he co-founded coincided with job outsourcing and bankruptcies.
Romney responded by attacking Obama as anti-private sector for saying: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
