Sherrod Brown won't appear with Obama in Ohio

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) will be in Ohio on Wednesday when President Obama delivers a speech on the economy at a Cleveland-area high school, but he won't be appearing with the president.

Brown has a series of his own appearances Wednesday, including a visit to the Ohio Farm Bureau and a tour of a specialty-vehicle factory, his congressional office said. Brown will be joined at the factory by Veterans Affairs officials and will tout the creation of 30 jobs through programs to provide mobile care units for veterans.

A source close to Brown's campaign said that the commitments were scheduled before Obama announced his trip, and that Brown would appear with Obama at campaign events later in the year.

But those assurances were unlikely to quell Republican claims that Brown is avoiding appearances with Obama that his GOP opponent, Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel, could later use to paint Obama and Brown as overly cozy.

Obama is faring better in Ohio than in many other swing states, but not enough to eliminate any risk of weighing down other Democrats on the ballot. In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November, about the same number of Ohio voters approved of Obama as disapproved.

The decision of whether to appear alongside the president at campaign events had dogged other Democrats defending difficult seats in the Senate this cycle.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) raised eyebrows when she did not appear with Obama during an October visit to Missouri, where his poll numbers are under water. But McCaskill had a more watertight excuse: Joining Obama would have meant leaving Washington while the Senate was in session, and possibly missing important votes.

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