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Kamala Harris to skip traditional Al Smith Dinner in rare snub by major candidate

September 22, 2024 | | Print Article

Democrat nominee Kamala Harris’ handlers have said that she won’t attend the Al Smith Dinner, making her the first major party candidate not to participate in the charity event in four decades.

The 79th edition of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner which will be held on October 17 at the New York Hilton in midtown Manhattan is already sold out with former President Donald J. Trump expected to be there. His opponent will duck the dinner to instead stick to the carefully controlled settings that she has been kept in since she was undemocratically installed as her party’s nominee.

On Saturday, the Harris campaign told organizers that she’s skipping the Catholic fundraiser that raises money for Gotham’s most vulnerable, including women and underprivileged children with the news first being reported by CNN that she will instead focus on campaigning in a battleground state.

In election years, the annual affair features both the Democrat and Republican candidates who engage in light-hearted joking with each other, but in 2016, Trump took advantage of the white-tie event to ridicule a visibly uncomfortable Hillary Clinton. Team Kamala isn’t about to take a chance that he will do likewise with the vice president who wouldn’t have David Muir and Linsey Davis to protect her.

“We are disappointed that she will not be with us, as this is an evening of unity and putting aside political differences in support of a good cause of helping women and children in need regardless of race, creed, or background,” Archdiocese spokesperson Joseph Zwilling told the New York Post. “We hope she reconsiders.”

Harris will be the first candidate to not attend the dinner since Walter Mondale in 1984. The Minnesota Democrat would go on to be crushed by Ronald Reagan in the election.

The dinner is named after former Democrat New York governor Alfred E. Smith who grew up in poverty and went on to be the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee for a major party, losing the 1928 election to Herbert Hoover. It was first held in 1946 and has been a Big Apple institution ever since.

As a champion for depriving the rights of the unborn to life, Harris would have made for an uncomfortable guest considering the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion. In 2020, self-proclaimed “devout Catholic” Joe Biden participated in the event which was held online due to the COVID panic.

On Saturday, the Harris campaign announced that it had accepted an invitation for a CNN presidential debate to be held two weeks before the election, another controlled environment where Kamala would have the rabidly anti-Trump moderators – likely Dana Bash and Jake Tapper – on her side. She has refused to participated in a debate on Fox News, a network that isn’t in the pocket of the DNC.

“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has since reached out to the Archdiocese and confirmed he will be in attendance,” Zwilling confirmed to the New York Post.

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Chris Donaldson
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