WASHINGTON — Will he or won’t he? Vice President Dick Cheney is one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans, but there are doubts about whether he will attend the GOP convention.
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard has said he will not attend.
Cheney press secretary Megan Mitchell left the question open Tuesday, saying Cheney’s schedule has not been set for September. Delegates are scheduled to meet in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 1-4, to nominate Arizona Sen. John McCain for president.
Separately, six Republican senators have decided to skip the GOP convention. Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine all face tough re-election campaigns. Two others, Allard and Larry Craig of Idaho, are retiring.
Stevens was indicted last month on felony charges of concealing more than a quarter-million dollars in gifts and services from an oil company that helped renovate his home. His spokesman, Charles Abernathy, said Stevens normally campaigns instead of attending the convention in years when he’s up for re-election.
It would be highly unusual for a sitting vice president to skip his party’s nominating convention. For the past 32 years, the vice president has been either renominated for that job or nominated for president.
Cheney has low approval ratings and is widely regarded as a secretive, behind-the-scenes power broker. But his approach plays well to conservatives. The White House has to calculate whether Cheney would help or hurt McCain.
President Bush will deliver a speech on the first night of the convention and then leave, turning over the spotlight to McCain.
Democrats are working hard to link McCain to Cheney, mindful of Cheney’s unpopularity with the general public and his villainlike status among their party’s rank and file. On Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama linked the nation’s energy problems to Cheney and contended that McCain was following “the Cheney playbook.” The Democratic National Committee rolled out a new website Tuesday called “The Next Cheney.” It assails McCain’s potential vice- presidential picks and links each to Cheney.
McCain is quoted on the page as saying to Cheney in 2001, “With a little more luck, I might have been able to ask you to be my vice president.”
Even vice presidents not receiving a nomination have attended their party conventions in recent political history. In 1976, President Gerald Ford chose Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, not Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, as his running mate.
Rockefeller, who had been appointed to a position he no longer wanted, still appeared at the convention, nominating Dole.
In 1952, Vice President Alben W. Barkley abandoned a bid to succeed President Truman but still addressed delegates.
