DAYTON, Ohio — On Sunday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the Democrat who has held a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio since 2007, was at a canvassing kick-off on North Ludlow Street telling Democratic supporters at a campaign field office that his reelection campaign was all about his support for workers and “ reproductive rights .”
Never mind that reproductive rights are not at risk in Ohio, as that decision was made overwhelmingly by Ohio voters last November in a ballot referendum that amended their state constitution to guarantee the right to abortion and other reproductive “rights .”
Where Brown noticeably was absent the next day, and every other day this week, was Chicago at the Democratic National Convention that included a farewell to President Joe Biden and a nostalgic love fest with former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama and will conclude Thursday when Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepts the party’s nomination for the presidency.
Brown told CNN he wasn’t going and that he “often skip(s) conventions” or only goes for “maybe a day.” However, a detailed search of newspaper archives shows that he has attended every DNC since he was elected, including in 2016 when he told a reporter in Philadelphia that he had endured an “arduous” 32-day vetting process when the Hillary Clinton campaign considered picking him as her running mate and when he admitted he wanted the job more than he thought he would.
He was also in Charlotte, North Carolina, for Obama’s convention in 2012, the same year he was running for reelection to the Senate against Republican opponent Josh Mandel.
This week, though, Brown argues he is staying in Ohio because he is seeking reelection and that is what is most important. Brown faces Republican Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman in a state that has turned decidedly Republican since Brown first ran for the Senate in 2006. More importantly, it is a state where former President Donald Trump, who is on the top of the ticket in this year’s matchup, is wildly popular.
Just 256 miles due east of here, another senator and Democrat was also not in attendance at the convention — for very different reasons. He wants to be home with his children.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), the freshman Democrat who earned his seat in 2022 while recovering from a serious stroke, and who has unabashedly bucked factions of his party over Israel, the border, and the treatment of Biden after the debate, told reporter Peter Savodnik at the Free Press , “I’ve got three young kids, and they’re out of school. That is four days I can spend with my children.”
As someone who has covered Fetterman for over 20 years, that answer adds up. It’s just who he is.
Youngstown State University political scientist Paul Sracic said of their decisions that both Brown and Fetterman have one thing in common in that they know their voters.
“Brown has won elections in Ohio for longer than many of the state’s voters have been alive,” he said of his string of election victories that traces back to 1974.
“He has always relied on rock-solid support in blue-collar areas like Youngstown, but these voters have abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of a Trump-led GOP,” he said of Trump’s astonishing victories in Trumbull, Columbiana, and Stark counties beginning in 2016 and closing the deal with Mahoning in 2020.
It is important to note that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) won those same counties in his Senate bid against former congressman Tim Ryan, the Democrat whose congressional seat was located in three out of those four counties for decades. Sracic said Brown managed to hold his old coalition of voters together in 2018 but that in order to win this year, Brown will have to replicate this feat against a more talented and better-funded opponent in Moreno.
“You often hear voters in the Youngstown area say they didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but the party left them. Brown needs voters to believe that he is not a part of the party that left them. That new woke and progressive party will likely be on full display in Chicago, and Brown seems to understand he needs to stay as far away as possible,” said Sracic.
Fetterman’s decision is really the more interesting of the two since he won’t be on the ballot for another four years, Sracic noted.
“Even though Fetterman’s arrival on the political stage is fairly recent, he won his Senate seat by appealing to those same lapsed Democrats that Brown needs in Ohio. Fetterman’s curious support for Joe Biden, when others were abandoning him, makes sense in that Biden, regardless of his policies, was, like Sherrod Brown, something of an heirloom Democrat,” he said.
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In short, Fetterman could theoretically win votes not available to the current iteration of the party.
Sracic said although polls show a very close presidential race in Pennsylvania, “Fetterman’s decision to sit-out this convention may be an important clue as to what insiders might really see in the contest in the Keystone State.”
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