Alec Baldwin, the actor who appears frequently as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, plans to headline the annual fund-raising dinner of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
Baldwin, 60, a liberal activist who has toyed with running for office, in September 2000 denied ever having said “unequivocally” that he would leave the country if George W. Bush were elected president. Bush was, and Baldwin didn’t.
This year’s event, scheduled for Sunday, October 14 at Manchester Downtown Hotel, is billed as the “inaugural” Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner.
Before 2016, the annual fund raiser was known as the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, after the two prominent 19th century presidents whom Democrats consider to be the party’s founders. But then party officials changed the name because Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson owned slaves.
The event in 2016 was called the Kennedy-Clinton Dinner, after two prominent presidents of the modern era.
But in the fall of 2017 the name became problematic because the #MeToo movement’s focus on treatment of women spotlighted former President Bill Clinton’s behavior toward women as an attorney general and governor in Arkansas and as president of the United States. Critics chided the party.
This past August 7 party officials released a statement saying the new name of the event would be the Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner. The statement praised the mid-20th century first lady and activist without ever mentioning the previous two names of the event.
