Report: Christie turned down Romney rally request (Updated)

Per HuffPo's Jon Ward:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was effusive in his praise of President Barack Obama when the two leaders toured damage from Hurricane Sandy last week, turned down a request by Mitt Romney to appear with him at a rally on Sunday night in Pennsylvania, The Huffington Post has learned. … The Romney rally was held at a farm in Morrisville, Pa., not more than 20 minutes from Trenton, the New Jersey capital. The physical proximity of the event to New Jersey only added to questions in the Romney campaign about why Christie chose not to come. “You can’t tell me he couldn’t have gone over there for a night rally,” a Romney campaign source told HuffPost.

Sources in Christieland tell me there was never an actual ask made by the Romney campaign. The idea was discussed earlier last week and raised by some Republicans outside the two camps, but never came to be — because they knew Christie would say no given the damage in his state, one source said.

But what stands out about Ward's account is less about the specifics of asking Christie and more the sense of rawness in Romney's circle over the New Jersey governor's praise of Obama. That frustration has been largely kept under wraps, voiced independently by people like Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch.

But at the end of a hard-fought campaign, nerves are frayed all around.

UPDATE: A source says Romney was told personally that Christie would be unable to be on the trail at all, soon after the storm hit and the devastation was apparent in New Jersey.