Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) will not make it to this year’s Democratic National Convention, a decision he says should not be interpreted as anything out of the ordinary.
"I often skip conventions," Brown told CNN earlier this week when asked about his opponent’s appearance at the Republican National Convention last month.
But a Washington Free Beacon review of public records and newspaper archives found Brown has only missed a single Democratic National Convention since 1984. His spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.
Brown’s attempt to distance himself from the national Democratic Party highlights the delicate dance vulnerable incumbents such as Brown face in the lead-up to November. Several other vulnerable Democrats, including Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, are also skipping the convention.
But separating his record from the Biden-Harris administration may prove difficult for Brown, who votes with President Joe Biden more than 98 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. Ohio backed former president Donald Trump by a large margin in both 2016 and 2020, and election analysts expect him to comfortably carry the state again this year.
Until quite recently, Brown was comfortable with the Democratic Party association. His first Democratic convention was in 1984, when the then-Ohio secretary of state spoke alongside prominent Democrats to boost support for that year’s presidential candidate, Walter Mondale (D., Minn.).
Four years later, Brown hosted a party at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Ga., at the Pierremont Plaza Hotel. Things took a turn for the worse when a member of the Democratic Party’s rules committee collapsed on the dance floor from a heart attack. That individual died shortly later.
"I know it sounds trite," Brown said afterward. "But Jack died doing what he liked best. He was having fun and was attending a Democratic convention."
That experience may have deterred Brown from attending the 1992 Democratic National Convention in Manhattan, the same year he was first elected to Congress. But four years later, Brown was back in the swing of things.
At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1996, Brown, according to local media reporters, received an exclusive tour of Wrigley Field. Brown told a local reporter that "he also took a few swings in the battle cage and ran the bases."
Brown would go on to attend the 2000 and 2004 conventions. In 2008, he hosted a town hall event that was broadcast on C-SPAN. In 2012, he sat next to then-Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio.) during the Democratic festivities in Charlotte, North Carolina.
By 2016, Brown was giving primetime speeches at the Democratic National Convention. During his remarks that year, Brown offered his endorsement of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and proclaimed that she would "win Ohio because as everyone [here] knows, so goes Ohio, so goes the nation."
Although the 2020 Democratic National Convention was virtual, Brown still appeared remotely for a segment called "America Recovering: Stories of Survival." And, according to Brown, that year’s convention was one of the "best."
"I’ve been to a lot of conventions for a lot of years, and I thought the single best moments I’ve ever seen were the roll call of the states last night," Brown told a local news outlet.