NEW YORK (AP) —
Vice President Kamala Harris will address Al Smith’s charity dinner via video on Thursday evening after deciding to skip the event in person in a break with presidential campaign tradition, organizers said.
Former President Donald Trump plans to attend in person.
The white tie event raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and traditionally gives presidential candidates from both parties a chance to make light-hearted statements in the final election cycle.
Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Her team had previously said that with just weeks to go, they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in the battleground states that will decide the election, rather than detouring to heavily Democratic New York .
The Daily Caller was first to report that Harris would address the dinner via a screen.
Both Trump and Catholic President Joe Biden spoke in 2020 at a virtual version of the fundraiser, which was moved online amid concerns about large gatherings at the height of the pandemic.
In 2016, the dinner turned particularly nasty when Trump unleashed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, drawing boos from the crowd when he called her “corrupt” and accused her of “pretending she didn’t hate Catholics.”
The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is named after the former governor of New York, a Democrat who was the first Catholic to receive a major party nomination for president when he ran unsuccessfully for the White House in 1928.
The event has become a tradition for presidential candidates since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together in 1960. In 1996, the Archdiocese of New York decided not to invite then-President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger Bob Dole, reportedly because Clinton vetoed a ban on late-term abortion.
