Obama to hit campaign trail

President Obama will spend the final week before the midterm elections crisscrossing the country to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Maine, the White House announced Wednesday.

{mosads}And the president is adding at least one Senate race to the president’s campaign schedule: an event for Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is battling Republican Terri Lynn Land to replace retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

But the president’s schedule will be focused primarily on gubernatorial races, where polls indicate that Democrats have a far better chance of victory and where the president, who is struggling with dismal approval ratings, could inflict far less damage. The president will stay in reliably Democratic areas, focusing his efforts in states he won handily in both 2008 and 2012.

Obama will campaign Wednesday in Connecticut with incumbent Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) and is scheduled to travel to Maryland on Sunday and Illinois on Monday to assist the Democratic gubernatorial candidates there.

The president and first lady together have also recorded more than a dozen radio spots and automated phone messages designed to drive voters — especially from urban areas, where Obama remains quite popular — to the polls. On Wednesday morning, the president is expected to emphasize get-out-the-vote efforts in an interview on Steve Harvey’s radio show.

Still, the president has been largely shunned by Democrats in the pivotal races expected to decide control of the Senate.

Democrats in states like Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas and North Carolina have made a point of distancing themselves from Obama. In Kentucky, the party’s Senate nominee, Alison Lundergan Grimes, has repeatedly refused to say whether she voted for the president.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday Obama was not disappointed that Grimes and other vulnerable Democratic candidates had looked to distance themselves from him ahead of the midterm elections.

“The president is pleased on the record that he has amassed in his six years, almost six years in office,” Earnest said, citing the economic recovery and implementation of his signature healthcare law.

Asked why, if the president had a strong case to make, Obama had so far avoided appearing at campaign events with any Democratic Senate candidates, Earnest said Obama “obviously has got a few things on his plate these days” — an apparent reference to the Ebola outbreak and fight against jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

“But the president is looking forward to the opportunity to campaign with other candidates in advance of the midterms,” he added.