Obama family heads to Hawaii, campaign stays home

By Jeff Mason

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - It's not a battleground state and it's unlikely to tip the U.S. election in November, but White House hopeful Barack Obama headed to Hawaii on Friday - minus, largely, his presidential campaign.

The Democratic candidate is going on vacation, and although he is flying on his campaign plane, most of his staff are staying behind.

The Illinois senator and his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, took off for the state where Obama grew up and where his grandmother, who helped raise him, still lives. They will spend the week at a rented house and, other than a welcoming rally and a fundraiser, no major campaign events are planned.

So it's not a working vacation -- something his Republican rival John McCain sees as an opening.

A spokesman for the Arizona senator, who has been pushing Congress to cut short its summer break and return to Washington to work on energy issues, needled Obama for heading to Hawaii's sun.

"Instead of calling on his friends and allies in Congress to return to put a much-needed energy policy in place to fight sky-high gas prices, Barack Obama is joining them with a beach vacation of his own," said Tucker Bounds.

The presumptive Republican nominee, who frequently spends weekends off the campaign trail at his home in Arizona, had a full schedule planned for the week ahead with events in the industrial Midwest and on the Pacific Coast, his spokesman said.

Obama does not seem to be worried about ceding the spotlight and suggested it might help reduce any fatigue that some voters have said they are feeling from seeing him daily on the news.