Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde said that Vice President Kamala Harris is skipping Thursday’s Al Smith dinner in New York City because her campaign is in “panic mode” and wants to hide her from public scrutiny. 

Hovde told The Daily Wire that Harris was skipping the annual Catholic fundraiser, which traditionally features presidential candidates in election years, because they were trying to keep her out of the public eye.

“As we know she has a hard time stringing sentences together if she’s on the fly,” Hovde told The Daily Wire. “Unless she has teleprompters telling her what to say, she’s just not good.”

Hovde added that Harris’s limited interactions with the public mirrored President Joe Biden’s approach during the 2020 campaign. 

“We’ve never seen a presidential candidate ever restrict themselves like this, with one exception,” he said. “That was 2020, during the COVID lockdowns, and they ran Joe Biden from the basement because they knew he wasn’t very good — because he probably had onsets of dementia.”

Without lockdowns as an excuse to keep Harris out of the public eye, Hovde says her campaign was “doing everything in their power to hide her.”

Harris will give a video message to attendees of the Al Smith Dinner, which typically features candidates taking light jabs at each other. Former President Donald Trump, who is attending the dinner, criticized Harris for skipping the event. 

“It’s sad, but not surprising, that Kamala has decided not to attend,” Trump said in September. “I don’t know what she has against our Catholic friends, but it must be a lot, because she certainly hasn’t been very nice to them, in fact, Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Administration.”

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Hovde is locked in a tight race with incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin as both Trump and Harris focus their efforts on the Badger State.

A recent internal poll from the National Republican Senatorial Committee showed Hovde with a one point lead over Baldwin, whose internal polling also shows a close contest. Hovde told The Daily Wire that he has surged because of his focus on issues like the economy, inflation, and illegal immigration. 

Baldwin and Hovde are set to meet for a debate Friday in Madison hosted by WMTV at 7:00 p.m. local time.