DENVER - Hundreds of elected officials and candidates will be among the more than 50,000 people here for this week's Democratic National Convention.

But they won't see North Carolina's two most prominent Democrats.

Neither U.S. Senate hopeful Kay Hagan nor gubernatorial candidate Bev Perdue plans to attend. Both campaigns say that with 10 weeks to the election, there's too much to do back home.

"North Carolina is a big state, and it's important that Kay talk to voters from one end ... to the other," said Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan.

Republicans suggest that the two Democrats are trying to distance themselves from presidential nominee Barack Obama.

In a state where their presidential candidate hasn't won since 1976, North Carolina Democrats have often seemed to go out of their way to avoid appearing with their nominee. In 2004, for example, Gov. Mike Easley and Senate candidate Erskine Bowles kept their distance from Sen. John Kerry, who lost the state to George W. Bush by 12 percentage points.

"The closer you get to November, the more the local Democratic candidates are going to want to distance themselves," said Ferrell Blount, a former state GOP chairman.

But North Carolina's top Republican candidates plan to skip their convention, too.

Neither U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole nor gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory will join GOP delegates next week in Minneapolis.

Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at N.C. State University, said nobody should be surprised.

"It's indicative of what the conventions have become, which is a place where not a lot of substantive business gets done but a place where party activists ... get to network," he said. "And people of that stature are already plugged into that."

No offense, Obama

There's little evidence that Hagan or Perdue are trying to avoid Obama. Both have endorsed him. Although neither appeared with him last week in Raleigh, both were at a June event in Charlotte, though plane trouble kept Obama himself from attending.

And both stand to benefit from an Obama campaign that is working hard to take North Carolina out of the Republican column in November. Obama has galvanized thousands of new voters and spent more than $2 million in the state, mostly on TV ads.

Hagan is "looking forward to campaigning with [Obama] again this fall, that's for sure," Flanagan said.

Perdue spokesman Tim Crowley said Perdue is focused on her race at home.

"She's obviously got a competitive race in North Carolina," he said, "and she wants to spend her time getting her message out to as many voters as she can."

Republicans busy, too

Though the GOP convention will nominate McCain, it will also showcase Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have low approval ratings in North Carolina and across the country.

Dole "is running for Senate in North Carolina," said spokesman Hogan Gidley. "It just so happens she had several events scheduled during the week of convention."

In 2004, McCrory attended both parties' conventions. At the Democratic gathering in Boston, he criticized fellow North Carolinian John Edwards, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee.

Campaign manager Richard Hudson said McCrory has three fundraisers planned in North Carolina during convention week.

"We just decided his time is better spent here," Hudson said. "I hope the delegates to the convention from North Carolina have already made up their mind who they're voting for governor."

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