RNC 2024: Which Republicans have stayed away from Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE ? Overseas official business. Logistical nightmares. Honoring the retiring director of her home state's potato board.
Those are just a few of the reasons why some of the nation's elected Republican senators and governors have opted to skip traveling to the 2024 battleground state of Wisconsin to celebrate their party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and his newly named running mate, J.D. Vance.
Their varied excuses for staying away from this week's Republican National Convention underscore the schism between the party's “traditional” and MAGA wings that has only grown since Trump shocked the establishment in 2016 with his primary upset.
It's an awkwardness GOP officials will need to continue to navigate as Trump further elevates his status as the king of his party and with a rematch ahead against President Joe Biden.
“The traditional Republicans are not going to be given speaking slots,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former top economic adviser to John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, told USA TODAY. “There's no reason for them to be there for that, and as a result, there's less pure political attraction to be made.”
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The list of Republicans who aren't coming to Milwaukee includes Sen. Susan Collins. The Maine Republican told reporters last week that she planned to write in former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on her ballot in November and that she has a full schedule of events planned in her home state that will keep her far from Wisconsin.
“She will be in Maine with a schedule that includes attending a memorial service, dedicating a new fire station for which she secured funding, and honoring the retiring director of the Maine Potato Board,” said Annie Clark, a spokesperson for Collins.
Some Republican figures, such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Todd Young of Indiana, filled their calendars with other commitments during the convention that will keep them away from Wisconsin, according to their Senate offices. Murkowski is in Alaska for official business, and Young is out of the country on official travel this week.
Changing roles of conventions
This week's RNC comes 48 hours after an assassination attempt against Trump and when safety is top of mind in a period of heightened political rhetoric.
"I am so relieved to not have to go," former Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., told USA TODAY on Saturday. "I don’t know many people who are looking forward to being there.”
Political conventions also are changing in ways that don’t make attendance necessary, said Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who also is not attending. Advances in technology have simplified some convention procedures, especially after the 2020 national political conventions during the coronavirus pandemic, Holtz-Eakin said.
Presidential campaigns also have become “less policy-intensive,” which has made national conventions less of a place for lawmakers to discuss the party’s policies and future legislation, he said.
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There are also the logistics of attending often massive and national conventions with thousands of like-minded people and swarms of media.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said in an interview with a local television station in late June that the event would be a “logistics nightmare” and that he wouldn't be attending. The two-term governor backed Haley in the 2024 Republican primary, but he emphasized his absence doesn’t signal a defiance of Trump. He said he would be supporting the former president from his home state.
“I’ve had my criticisms with the former president. I stick by all those, actually,” he told WMUR 9. “But at the end of the day, it’s about choices, and I think it’s pretty widely understood that no one really loves both candidates at the top, but people want change.”
Passing on the baton
Prominent Republicans who had the spotlight at past GOP conventions are also nowhere to be found in Milwaukee. That list includes 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator for Utah, and his former running mate, Paul Ryan, who stepped down as House speaker during the Trump administration.
Also AWOL from Wisconsin: former President George W. Bush.
“I don’t think (Bush is) hankering for the spotlight” Matt Schlapp, a conservative activist who was political director in the George W. Bush White House, told USA TODAY.
Schlapp, whose group organizes the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, added that he isn’t surprised some of the old Republican order are opting out of the convention.
“There’s always a bridge to the next generation of leadership, and that’s true today."
Britanny Carloni is a state politics reporter for IndyStar. Sam Woodward is an election reporting fellow for USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: RNC 2024: Who is staying away from Milwaukee?