Endorsements and the voters’ final say

In the late stages of the General Election campaign, a not-entirely minor controversy bubbled to the surface when the owners of two major metropolitan dailies — the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post — bucked their past traditions and, amid protests from their editorial boards, declared they would issue no endorsement in the race for president.

Some of the factors in their decisions were peculiar to the two organizations, but their reticence was indicative of a growing trend that we acknowledged in an editorial prefacing our own two-week period of election endorsements in mid October. For various reasons, newspapers are increasingly deciding to give up the practice. So far, we have resisted that impulse, clinging to the philosophy that all our editorials, like all our presentations of letters, syndicated columns and cartoons, are intended to provide a line of thinking that ought to be part of community conversations regarding significant issues affecting our daily lives. Elections surely qualify as such conversations.

But expressing opinions about them puts unusual strains on our research resources, and it does carry its own baggage relevant to our mission. As you may have seen in responses we published to our presidential endorsement, a selection of letters published on last Monday’s Opinion page and other letters responding to the election, emotions run high for readers who disagree with an endorsement — especially a presidential endorsement and especially in today’s deeply divided political climate. We are not deaf to these concerns. Our editorials and endorsements are intended to make you think, not necessarily make you bitter. We have accepted the risk because, in general, we trust that the value of the former objective outweighs the occurrence of the latter result.

In that context, it is interesting to reflect on certain aspects of the endorsement process in the aftermath of the 2024 General Election. Perhaps most prominently, our preference for Kamala Harris for president proved out of step with most of the nation as Donald Trump was chosen to return to office — but it was not out of step with the voters of our state or of the suburbs, who are our primary constituency. Even if it were, our duty is to express what we honestly think, not to cater to a given audience, so we strive to present our thinking without regard for the criticism that may follow.

Still, in this election, a deeper look at the results of our other 63 endorsements in congressional, legislative and county races suggests our inclinations are not far removed from those of many suburban voters. Here, our recommendations aligned with the voters in all but five races, with two additional races as yet undetermined because they’re so close that the outcome could be affected by mail-in votes.

And notice this: While Democrats happened to get our recommendations in most cases, in all five of the races where voters disagreed with our choices, they selected a Democrat over the Republican we preferred, and in the other two, the Republicans we endorsed were barely clinging to their leads awaiting the results from mail-in ballots.

Regarding party affiliations, it is interesting to reflect on changes we have seen in the suburbs over the years. When we evaluated candidates in the 1980s, ‘90s and even early 2000s, Republicans overwhelmingly dominated elected offices from the suburbs. As a result, many candidates’ depth of political experience and sophistication tended to attract our endorsements, and the party’s dominance attracted few challenges from truly strong Democratic candidates. Somewhere over the course of the past 10 to 15 years, that dynamic has shifted completely — and the impact is reflected in our endorsements. Whereas in the 1990s we were extremely comfortable endorsing conservative Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, for instance, because we felt he was an effective and cooperative representative of his district, we were just as comfortable in 2024 endorsing Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi for the same reasons.

Of course, in the end, it is the voters, not the representatives of the Daily Herald Editorial Board, who have the final say.

So, it can be misleading to see a broad general message in newspaper endorsements — beyond the one unarguable point that those papers who still endorse care about our communities and remain willing to engage with our audiences about the issues that most affect them. As you reflect on our endorsements in 2024 and the degree to which they did or did not influence your thinking, we hope you will remember that sense of purpose, regardless of the outcome of the races your cared about.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.