By 8:00 on the morning after Superstorm Sandy struck New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie had already appeared on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning,” not to mention CNN, Fox and MSNBC. He wore a blue fleece, the weathered glare of a man in charge of a crisis, and a scowl that made what he said seem true: He didn't give a damn about the presidential election one week away, even though he had spent the last 13 months as a surrogate for Mitt Romney. Instead, he was headed out for a helicopter survey of the Jersey Shore, where he would see the Seaside Heights log flume—which his daughter had ridden last summer—floating in the Atlantic. He would see the boardwalk—where his near-fisticuffs with a heckler in July landed him on TMZ—lying in a pile of splinters. He would see, up close, the worst disaster in the state’s modern history.

“I just never thought I would see, what I saw today, ever,” Christie told the press that night, in a powerful clip immediately posted on his YouTube channel (5.9 million views and counting).

That same morning, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, opened his day with a typically uplifting message to his 1.2 million Twitter followers: “Today will be a difficult day. It will demand our fortitude, patience & endurance.” Christie may have been managing a multi-agency recovery operation, but Booker was a spiritual guide and freelance lifesaver on the streets of his darkened city, using Twitter like a bat signal. After a constituent tweeted at him about her disabled parents, Booker went to their apartment and reported back that he had accounted for them—and for everyone else in the building. He fielded complaints about exploding transformers, trees trapping people in trucks, and shelters in need of blankets. And since the electricity was on at his house, he invited Newark residents to come over, watch DVDs, charge cell phones and sleep in his guest bed while he was out saving people. More than a dozen took him up on the invitation.

That perhaps the two most compelling politicians in America hail from the same state is dramatic enough. Now consider that soon they may be running against each other.

Christie, the Republican convention’s keynote speaker, is up for re-election next year. The 50-year-old hasn't said whether he’ll seek it, but some political observers wondered if his controversial bro-hug of President Obama after Sandy indicated that he was more focused on keeping his seat in blue New Jersey than on remaining loyal to the GOP’s fading nominee. As he often says, “I love this job,” and besides: he probably doesn't want to be a one-term governor when he runs for president in 2016.