Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill says that she wishes she could have attended President’s Barack Obama’s fundraisers in St. Louis Tuesday night, but she had a fundraiser of her own that had been scheduled long before the president’s visit.
Earlier this week, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and other Republican Party officials pointed out that McCaskill and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, both democrats, would not attend. Nixon did meet the President at the airport and appeared at the downtown fundraiser with Obama.
McCaskill says although she disagrees with Obama on some issues, they are still friends.
“Had I dumped my job yesterday and gone to St. Louis, I’m sure that Karl Rove and the Republicans, the anonymous billionaires that are spending all this money trying to take me out; I’m sure the ad would have been ‘she’d rather be hobnobbing in St. Louis with rich people with her friend Obama than doing her job in the Senate,’” McCaskill said. “This kind of goes under the category of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
McCaskill says if the president had been delivering a policy speech and not attending a fundraiser, she might have changed her plans.