Al Smith, the precious four-term governor of New York, was the first Catholic to emerge on a big party vote for leader.
The Herbert Hoover firm, which had been instrumental in the 1928 presidential campaign, caused a storm of anti-Catholic prejudice, which was aided by the Klu Klux Klan and another nationalist organizations, which accused Smith of being a church representative and thus the devil himself. From the church, evangelical preachers hurled at him. Even major christian temples warned against Smith’s “dual interests”.
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When Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy, neither main party had run for president for thirty years because the Smith battle was like a failure.  ,
Smith died in 1944, and in 1945, the most democratic Catholic priest in British history, New York’s Francis Spellman, decided to hold a meal to “bring up America’s social, company, and military elite to raise money for different Catholic charities”, according to City Journal’s Vincent J. Cannato.  ,
Spellman’s court in New York City was known as” the powerhouse”, and no Democrat could get the election without his gift. Prior to Spellman’s 1960 dinner invitation, it was primarily a New York event.  ,
JFK, who had his own Catholic concern, was anxious to appear, believing that Nixon had exploit the supper for his benefit. After attending a Catholic dinner, he eventually gave up and delivered a fantastic performance, including the line of the night about hoping to be invited to a Quaker dinner.
The dinner did n’t always host both candidates, and in recent decades, several candidates have either not been invited or refused the invitation.  ,
Even after 1960, many election-year dinners would not see the two main candidates for the White House. In 1964, Spellman pointedly declined to invite Barry Goldwater, extending the offer only to Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were invited to a New York dinner in 1980, but Walter Mondale declined, as a result of tensions within the Democratic Party over abortion. In 1996, John Cardinal O’Connor invited neither Bob Dole nor Bill Clinton, because of the latter’s stance on late-term abortions, the vice presidential candidates, Al Gore and Jack Kemp, were featured instead. Similarly, in 2004, the archdiocese invited neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry, likely because of the Catholic Kerry’s support for abortion rights.
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The Catholic vote is no longer as monolithic as it was. In 1928, the Catholic vote was overwhelmingly Democratic, concentrated in urban centers. By 1960, the Catholic vote was fracturing through intermarriage and economic issues, but Kennedy still received about 65 % of the vote from his co-religionists.
Today, Donald Trump can expect to get about 60 % of the Catholic vote. In Pennsylvania, The Catholic vote might be pivotal in a state that Harris absolutely, positively has to win.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, William McGurn wrote that “her San Francisco progressive persona does n’t fit Joe Biden’s native state.”
After the Supreme Court upheld the company’s claim in 2014 that it should be exempt from an Obamacare mandate that mandates companies include contraception in employee health policies, McGurn noted that Harris, as California’s attorney general, was opposed to religious exemptions for private employers like Hobby Lobby.
While serving as a senator in 2018, Harris also criticized Brian Buescher’s affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization named for Christopher Columbus that promotes traditional Catholic beliefs on issues like same-sex unions and abortion.
Later, Harris co-sponsored the Equality Act, a bill that, according to McGurn, had drawn national Catholic organizations ‘ fierce opposition because of its purported pro-abortion policy implications.
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Democrats, under the leadership of Harris, attempted to demonize the Knights of Columbus, turning them out to be cousins of the Klan, during the confirmation hearing for Brian Buescher. The Knights are n’t even the most traditional Catholic organization, but they do fantastic good deeds. But Harris, who was eyeing the presidency at the time. She hoped that her campaign would benefit from trying a radical pose in the fight against Buescher.  ,
” Pew Research Center’s 2014 U. S. Religious Landscape Study, 24 percent of Pennsylvanians identified as Catholic. In 2020, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, citing the Official Catholic Directory, put that figure at 23 percent—meaning that of the state’s 13 million residents, about 3 million are Catholic”, writes Newsweek.  ,
Harris skipped the Al Smith Dinner in a Pennsylvania election that was almost certainly decided by less than 100,000 votes was illogical and might have been her mistake.