Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote, the largest lay Catholic advocacy group in the country, penned a piece along with former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, Steve Cortes, stating that he believes the attacks that Vice President Kamala Harris made on Catholics could potentially cost her the 2024 presidential election. One can only hope, right?
Burch kicked off the op-ed by recounting how the 2023 Al Smith dinner ended up raising a massive $7 million in order to provide funding for Catholic schools for inner city kids in New York, along with pediatric healthcare and other charities. Many so-called luminaries attend the event every year, along with many bishops and priests from all over the world. Even New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer showed up.
“In fact, the dinner’s political importance has meant that, since 1984, every Democratic and Republican presidential nominee has attended for a night of serious fundraising combined with a roast-style set of speechmaking barbs, just weeks before the quadrennial presidential vote,” Burch wrote, adding, “Until now.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has snubbed the invitation to the event, a refusal called “disappointing” by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan — a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump — wrote that whatever Harris thinks of the institutional Catholic Church, “the Al Smith dinner exists to raise money to feed the hungry, teach the child, heal the sick, house the immigrant.” Noonan continued, pointing out that American Catholics are “70 million strong and the famous deciders of national politics, backing Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016.”
This point about Catholics picking presidents has merit, as U.S. Catholic adherents have been the very definition of true swing voters for many decades. For a half century the Catholic vote went to the presidential winner in every contest but one. The exception was the super-close 2000 race between Al Gore and eventual winner George W. Bush.
During the 2020 presidential election, Burch notes that the Catholic vote was almost split perfectly between Trump and Biden. The writer points out that many Catholics had turned against Trump in 2020 compared to the number that supported him in 2016. Pew Research did a voter survey of election returns following the 2016 race that demonstrated the former president took the vast majority of the demographic at 52 percent to twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s 44 percent. It was a critical group to reach as key battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have a large Catholic population.
Now, there are material signs that the Catholic vote – the decisive swing vote – shifts back to the 45th president over Harris. For example, in battleground Wisconsin, the latest published poll from American Greatness shows Trump with a commanding 15% lead among Catholics over Harris, 53-38%. That same poll shows the overall race tied in Wisconsin at 47-47% each. So, the substantial Catholic population of the Badger State could well tip the balance in a very tight contest toward Trump. In battleground Georgia, a state with a growing Catholic population, Trump’s lead among Catholics swells to 23%. Like Wisconsin, the TIPP Insights poll shows the overall race tied in the Peach State — so a strong Catholic turnout could prove determinative.
“The Harris snub of the Al Smith event could provide exactly the motivation for Catholics to recognize her unfortunate and long-standing disrespect for Catholics. After all, as a senator, she actually questioned if a federal judicial nominee could serve on the federal bench simply because he is a faithful Catholic who belongs to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service society,” Burch stated in the article.
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But guess who is attending the event? Trump. He’ll be honoring Catholics and having a good time while helping to raise money for projects happening all over the nation that desperately need funding. After all the damage done by inflation due to the horrific economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration, there has been an uptick in the demand for funds for Catholic school tuition assistance as well as donations for food banks that help tons of struggling American families.