the blog of DC Drinking Liberally
Newspaper endorsements have no effect in some races, but an endorsement from the major local paper (in DC’s case, the Washington Post) can sometimes cause people to pay serious attention to a candidate they would otherwise have written off, especially in a race with many candidates. Besides, reading the reasoning behind the endorsements can help you think through your own decisions, and sometimes endorsements are even entertaining.
I’ve searched out the endorsements for the September 12 Democratic primary from several local newspapers and put them into a table with links so you can read them. The big one, of course, is the Washington Post. The table omits the Washington Times because it has made only one DC endorsement, Marie Johns for mayor, but I did include our other conservative-owned paper, the Washington Examiner (which recently warned us about Muslims under the bed).
The Washington City Paper doesn’t have editorials, but its political columnist, Loose Lips, does make endorsements, so I’ve included those. Finally, the Northwest Current endorsed candidates, but it doesn’t put its content online, so there are no links for it.
Post | Examiner | Loose Lips | Current | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Mayor | Fenty | Fenty | Fenty | Johns |
City Council, Chair | Gray | Patterson | Patterson | Patterson |
City Council, At Large | Mendelson | Bolden | Mendelson | Mendelson |
City Council, Ward 1 | Graham | Graham | Graham | —— |
City Council, Ward 3 | Cheh | Goulet | Cheh | Cheh |
City Council, Ward 5 | Thomas | James | Ray | —— |
City Council, Ward 6 | Wells | Etherly | Wells | —— |
Delegate to the House | —— | —— | Norton | —— |
Shadow Senator | —— | —— | Pannell | —— |
Shadow Representative | —— | —— | Panetta | —— |
For links to the candidates’ websites, see the list of Democratic primary candidates.
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I don’t care what the papers say–I’m more interested in what the other candidates say: Michael Brown’s endorsement of Linda Cropp Shows that the other candidates for mayor know that she is the only person who can lead the District into a prosperous future. I have no doubt she will win the election for mayor next week. Cropp is an innovator and a forward thinker. She has outlined a strong vision for change and opportunity. Mr. Brown has now reinforced this by bowing out of the race and throwing his support squarely behind Cropp for mayor. This election is just heating up.
—Richard • 6:51 am, September 11
Yes, Cropp will need Brown’s 3% support, along with quite a bit more. But she does seem to be winning the blog comment war. Some of the Croppists in local blog comments are reminiscent of a certain Ward 3 candidate whose endorsement Cropp has received — no doubt involuntarily. But I somehow suspect that more people still read newspaper endorsements than blog comments.
By the way, the election is tomorrow, not next week. I assume you just forgot to update some boilerplate for pasting into blog comment forms. Thanks for at least customizing the start of the comment.
—Keith • 12:00 pm, September 11