One would think that a nominating convention is a command performance for prominent members of a president’s party.
But that is not the case for vulnerable Democrats running in districts where President Obama is less than popular. Senator Claire McCaskill on Tuesday became the latest Democrat to decide to skip the party’s national convention in Charlotte, N.C., later this summer.
Ms. McCaskill, who campaigned actively for Mr. Obama in 2008, is fighting for a second term in a state leaning toward Mitt Romney in the polls and where three potential Republican challengers are all seeking Tea Party support.
A campaign aide said that Ms. McCaskill, of Missouri, has not attended a national convention in those years that she is on the ballot, most recently in 2004 when she ran for governor. The aide repeated the mantra of all candidates who choose to skip a splashy convention with all the hoopla – Ms. McCaskill thinks it’s more important to talk to voters.
This week, three leading Democrats from West Virginia – Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin III and Representative Nick J. Rahall II – said they would also miss the convention this September, according to the state’s Democratic Party. All three are up for re-election in November.
Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia, where last month a protest candidate, a federal prison inmate, won 40 percent of the vote in the Democratic presidential primary.
In a statement Mr. Tomblin said he felt “that his time is best spent working in West Virginia to move our state forward instead of attending a four-day political rally in North Carolina.’’
In western Pennsylvania, another battleground region, Representative Mark Critz said he, too, would take a pass on the Democratic National Convention. It is more important, he said, “to spend my time in western Pennsylvania listening to the people about how we can create jobs for the region.’’
But Democrats are not the only party-skippers. Representative Denny Rehberg, Republican of Montana, will not attend his party’s convention in Tampa in August, according to a report in The Hill this week. He intends to focus on his bid to unseat the state’s freshman Democratic Senator, Jon Tester, who is also reported to be skipping Charlotte.
Mr. Rehberg, Montana’s lone Congressman, has shown an independent streak before. He voted against President George W. Bush’s bailout of Wall Street in 2008 and against the House budget package crafted by Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin.
In a political advertisement Mr. Rehberg describes himself as an independent thinker who “refuses to toe the party line.’’
