Democrats' most endangered senators skip their convention amid tough campaigns

TOLEDO, Ohio — As his fellow Democrats gathered for their national convention, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio campaigned here Wednesday alongside a Republican sheriff.

“There’s a lot more voters in Toledo than there are in Chicago.” Brown told reporters after an event designed in part to promote his endorsement from Mark Wasylyshyn, the top law enforcement officer in nearby Wood County.

Brown is among a handful of vulnerable Democratic senators who are skipping this week’s convention. They prefer to keep a distance, literally and figuratively, projecting independence from their party as they navigate tricky re-election paths back home, where Republicans are eager to tie them to an unpopular president.

In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester spent Wednesday evening at a fundraiser with Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, a native of his hometown. When Vice President Kamala Harris accepts her nomination Thursday night at the United Center in Chicago, Tester will be at the band’s show at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula.

Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico also have chosen to stay away from the festivities. Rosen is seeking a second term in a state known for close elections; Heinrich a third in a state that has favored Democrats in recent cycles but attracted more attention from Republicans this year.

Spokespeople for Rosen and Heinrich said they have not always attended past conventions but both support Harris. Brown also backs the vice president’s presidential bid. Tester has withheld an endorsement.

Brown and Tester, both seeking fourth terms, have the toughest races ahead — they’re the only two Democratic senators up for re-election in states that former President Donald Trump carried twice and is likely to win again in November. A third, Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin, decided not to run for re-election in West Virginia, where Republicans are likely to flip his seat.

Brown’s GOP challenger, businessman Bernie Moreno, is mocking him for staying home, while the Ohio Republican Party has papered Chicago with “MISSING” fliers featuring Brown’s face.

“Why do you think he’s not going to the convention?” Moreno rhetorically asked supporters at a recent event in a Cleveland suburb. “Because he doesn’t want [reporters] taking a picture of him next to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, because then you see it and you’re like, ‘Oh, wait, I thought he was a moderate, bipartisan, Trump-loving Democrat.’”

Brown has downplayed his decision, telling CNN this month that he had skipped conventions “often” in the past. His hometown newspaper, the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, subsequently reported that it had been at least three decades since Brown missed one.

“I’ve gone, generally, for a day,” Brown clarified Wednesday. “I don’t sit there the whole time.”

Brown's and Tester’s absences from this year’s convention illustrate “exactly who they are,” said Martha McKenna, who ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s independent expenditure efforts when both senators were on the ballot in 2018 and 2012.

“When they have a choice to make, they said, ‘I’m going to stay here, keep working, keep campaigning, keep doing the job,’” McKenna added, asserting that people “read too much” into who attends conventions.

Republicans, who watched most of their battleground Senate candidates speak at last month’s GOP convention in Milwaukee, have ridiculed Democratic candidates no matter their choice.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who is scheduled to address the convention Thursday night, drew a rebuke from Elizabeth Gregory, the communications director for his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick, for speaking “in support of the most liberal presidential ticket in American history.”

Other Democrats in competitive Senate races who are expected to speak Thursday include Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Colin Allred of Texas.

Running in a red state

Brown, once widely regarded as one of the Senate’s most reliable liberals, is presenting himself this year as more of a label-defying pragmatist. His schedule this week was built to emphasize legislation he has championed, from the bills targeted at slowing the flow of fentanyl to his efforts to preserve pension benefits for laborers.

“I’ve never bought this idea of politics as sort of left or right, liberal or conservative,” Brown told about 75 union leaders and retirees who turned out to hear him Tuesday at a United Steelworkers hall in Niles, near Youngstown. “To me, it’s whose side are you on.”

Later that day, at an event to pump up Democratic door-knockers in nearby Boardman, Brown encouraged people to put in a good word for him with their “goofy relatives” who might prefer Trump — and “if you can’t change their mind, go out and find two young people and register them to vote.”

One pro-Brown ad, produced by a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, emphasizes his work on an opioid bill signed into law by Trump. Another recent ad features Wasylyshyn, the Wood County sheriff who has visited the U.S.-Mexico border with Brown and worked with him on anti-fentanyl legislation.

“He’s taking a lot of heat for supporting a Democrat — a lot of heat,” Lucas County Sheriff Michael Navarre, a Democrat who also appeared with Brown at Wednesday’s event in Toledo, said of Wasylyshyn. “And he’s going to lose voters, but he believes very strongly, as I do, in picking the best candidate.”

Moreno’s campaign this week launched the first spot in its fall advertising campaign: a 30-second ad that blames Brown for helping to “create the crisis at our southern border, voting with radicals like Kamala Harris” to provide “taxpayer-funded stimulus checks” to undocumented immigrants.

Brown often talks up the close working relationship he had with former Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, despite their ideological differences. He also resisted Wednesday when asked by a Toledo reporter if he agreed with the Democratic attack line that Portman’s successor — Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee — is weird.

“I want to get stuff done,” Brown said in an interview with NBC News, responding to the suggestion that he’s obscuring his partisan identity. “I mean, I’m a Democrat. It’s clear I’m a proud Democrat. But I always choose: What does Ohio need?”

Moreno’s campaign, Brown added, “is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.”

Tester, for his part, has spent August working on his farm and campaigning. And this week’s Pearl Jam show continues a tradition of the band squeezing Montana into its tour schedule when Tester is running.

Pearl Jam's Ament hosted a fundraiser for Tester Wednesday night ahead of the band’s Thursday concert in Missoula. The senator and the bass player are longtime friends, having both grown up in the small town of Big Sandy. Tester’s campaign offered donors VIP packages that included tickets to “join” him at the show. The fundraising pitch: “Are you ready to rock on with Jon and Pearl Jam?”

Tester is in a hotly contested race against Republican Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and businessman. And Republicans aren’t buying Tester’s attempts to distance himself from national Democrats.

“Tester skipping the DNC doesn’t change the fact that he helped launch Kamala Harris’ political career and votes with the most extreme liberals in Washington that has resulted in skyrocketing inflation, open borders, job-killing Green New Scam mandates, and foreign policy disasters,” Sheehy campaign spokesperson Katie Martin said in a written statement, referring to reports that Tester recruited Harris to run for Senate when he led the DSCC in 2016.

Republicans are already working to tie Tester to Harris, with the Sheehy campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee teaming up on a TV ad knocking Harris’ past support for “Medicare for All.”

Tester, meanwhile, has highlighted his clashes with the Biden administration and his fellow Democrats, releasing an ad this month that touted his push to expand drilling for oil.

Although Tester, Brown and Rosen stayed away from the Chicago convention, Schumer name-checked all three, along with the party’s other top Senate candidates in his speech Tuesday night, making the case for a Democratic majority “to create good paying jobs and lower costs, to defend a woman’s right to choose, [and] to deliver for communities back home.”

Foam fingers bearing Tester’s name could be spotted among the Montana delegation, reflecting Tester’s hand that is missing three fingers due to a meat grinder accident.

Robyn Driscoll, the Montana Democratic Party chair, excitedly cast the state’s 24 delegate votes for Harris as Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman” blared — but she didn’t mention that number could have been 25. Tester abstained from the virtual roll call and did not cast a vote for Harris to be his party’s nominee.

Elizabeth Walters, the Ohio Democratic Party chair and longtime Brown ally, vowed that her state would “send Sherrod Brown back to the U.S. Senate” before casting her delegation’s votes for Harris.

Before the Toledo event on Wednesday, Brown asked aides and reporters in the room if they had seen Walters’ appearance. He had been tuning into the proceedings from afar. The previous evening, at the event in Boardman, he noted approvingly how labor leaders had been featured prominently in Monday’s program.

Michael Kripchak, the Democratic candidate in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District, which encompasses Youngstown, said Brown was smart to avoid the convention.

“It’s a big rally, and that’s awesome, and we need that to energize people,” Kripchak said. “But I personally believe it’s so much more important to get out there and talk to the people and motivate our canvassers so they’re more motivated and informed when they go talk to independents and conservative registered voters, because that’s what a lot of our canvassing is focused on now.”

Henry J. Gomez reported from Toledo and Bridget Bowman from Washington.