Kamala Harris skips the traditional Al Smith dinner, the presidential candidate avoids a charity event for the first time since 1984

This is no joke

Vice President Kamala Harris has decided to avoid former President Trump and shun this year’s Al Smith Dinner – a major event in an election year attended by generations of candidates – making her the first presidential hopeful to do so since failed presidential candidate Walter Mondale in 1984.

While Trump has agreed to attend the dinner of the 79th Archdiocese of New York on October 17, Harris’ camp says she will instead campaign in the crucial swing states in the home stretch before Election Day, her campaign team told the Washington Post.

Since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together in 1960, it has been a tradition for both presidential candidates to attend the dinner, where the candidates take turns giving speeches and poking fun at each other.

Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told the Post they had learned Harris would not be there on Saturday.

“We are disappointed that she will not be with us because this is an evening of unity where we put aside political differences to support a good cause: helping women and children in need, regardless of their race, creed or origin,” he said.

“We hope she reconsiders.”

According to Zwilling, former President Donald Trump’s campaign team has since contacted the archdiocese and confirmed its participation.

However, Harris’ team informed the organizers that she would be willing to attend the dinner if elected President of the United States.

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, first held in 1946, raises millions of dollars each year to support people in need in the Big Apple.

In election years, presidential candidates regularly appear and exchange humorous quips in the name of charitable causes.

Harris will be the first to turn down an invitation since Jimmy Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, turned one down in 1984 when he ran an unsuccessful campaign against President Ronald Reagan, Zwilling said.

In 1996, the Archdiocese of New York decided not to invite then-President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger Bob Dole, reportedly because Clinton had vetoed a ban on late-term abortions, according to the Associated Press.

Trump made a notable appearance at the 2016 dinner, where he was booed because viewers felt he went too far when he called his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton corrupt and accused her of hating Catholics.

Both Trump and President Biden delivered pre-recorded video addresses at the first virtual Al Smith Dinner in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but few jokes were made in their final address to Catholic voters.

In his speech, Trump called the Democrats “anti-Catholic” and emphasized his stance on the central Catholic issue of abortion. He called himself a “defender of the sacred right to life.”

Biden, a practicing Catholic, took a lighter path at the time, talking about how his faith had “helped him through the darkness” at certain times in his life.

The dinner is named after the former governor of New York who was the first Catholic ever nominated for president by a major party in 1928. This year’s event will take place at the New York Hilton Midtown.