The newspaper endorsement process has become so predictable (and likely lacking in influence) that many Republicans have simply stopped participating.
Michigan voters looking for voting advice in the state’s critical U.S. Senate race are told by the Detroit Free Press’s editorial board that Republican Mike Rogers “relies on tough-guy talk and manufactured outrage to appeal to voters.”
In Florida, Republican Senator Rick Scott is a “partisan apologist” who is rich but “pretends to be a champion of the little guy,” according to the left-wing Palm Beach Post.
Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick has a simple pitch to voters, the Philadelphia Inquirer says: “Everything is terrible, and it’s all [Democratic incumbent Bob] Casey’s fault.”
And if Republicans in Texas thought the editorial boards at the state’s biggest newspapers might have something nice to say about Senator Ted Cruz, think again: Cruz is a “tired act” and an “inveterate provocateur” who specializes in “angertainment,” they say.
Those are just some examples of the pro-Democrat, anti-Republican sentiments that the editorial boards of big-city newspapers expressed in their Senate endorsements this year.
Many Democrats were in a huff last week when it was revealed that the leaders of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times had put the kibosh on their papers’ endorsements of Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race — they say the decisions were made to avoid divisiveness and to reiterate their independence; critics say the moves are acts of “cowardice” in the face of the dire threat that is former president Donald Trump.
But Democrats in most of the states with battleground Senate races can rest easy knowing that their biggest newspapers are almost all supporting team blue in this year’s election.
To get a better sense of how invested in Democrats most newspaper editorial boards still are, National Review reviewed the opinion sections of four dozen newspapers in the ten most consequential Senate battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
While most small and mid-sized papers have given up on endorsements in all but an occasional local race, National Review identified 15 papers — mostly big-city dailies — that endorsed in their state’s Senate race. Thirteen of them backed the Democrat.
In many cases, the endorsement process has become so predictable (and likely lacking in influence) that Republican candidates have simply stopped participating.
Scott in Florida and Cruz in Texas don’t appear to have bothered engaging with any newspaper editorial boards, none of which were likely to support them anyway. In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno didn’t respond to an invitation to interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial board, which acknowledged that even if he had it “likely would not have changed our recommendation that [Democrat Sherrod Brown] is the best choice for Ohio.” The Plain Dealer noted that Brown is “one of the most reliably liberal votes in the Senate,” and that he has acknowledged his intention to vote to end the Senate filibuster.
Newspapers in Florida and Texas expressed particular disdain for Scott and Cruz.
The Miami Herald, which endorsed Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for Senate, said that Scott works “as if he represented a MAGA congressional district rather than one of the most diverse states in the nation.” The Palm Beach Post accused Scott of providing Trump with “amoral support” during the former president’s Manhattan criminal-court case this year.
Still, Scott is favored to win re-election in a state increasingly dominated by Republicans — he has a five-point lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average.
The editorial boards of the Texas papers — the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman, the San Antonio Express-News, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — are all backing Democrat Colin Allred over Cruz.
The Chronicle took aim at Cruz, calling him “the least likable senator since ‘Tail Gunner Joe’ McCarthy in the 1950s.” The Morning News took exception to Cruz objecting to the certification of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021, saying that his “actions were a catalyst for what became one of the worst days in our nation’s history.”
The Star-Telegram did offer some faint praise for Cruz, saying that he “has recently become a more effective senator for Texas than many want to admit.” That paper also acknowledged that Allred, a congressman and former pro-football player, “is probably to the left of most Texas voters,” but added that “he’s no raging progressive.”
Cruz is also favored to win — he has a 4.2 percent polling lead, Real Clear Politics shows.
A couple of the newspaper editorial boards that endorsed Democrats did have some positive things to say about the Republican candidates.
The Washington Post — the paper that declined to endorse Harris in part to show its independence, but still endorsed Maryland Democrat Angela Alsobrooks for Senate — noted that Larry Hogan, the anti-Trump Republican, handed the coronavirus well while serving as governor and “acted as a fiscally responsible check on a Democratic legislature in Annapolis.” The Post said both candidates “are experienced leaders who could represent Maryland ably.”
The Post endorsed Alsobrooks anyway, in part because she is younger and “has the potential to serve in the Senate for decades.” The editorial board also questioned whether Hogan’s “party-of-one political brand would add up to effectiveness as a legislator.”
The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison endorsed progressive Democrat Tammy Baldwin for reelection over Republican Eric Hovde, despite calling Hovde “an engaging guy who seems reasonable.” But, the paper said, “with Trump threatening more chaos, lies and division, Baldwin is the better — and proven — choice for Wisconsin’s future.”
National Review found two battleground-state papers that endorsed the Republican for Senate.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal in Nevada, which has a conservative-leaning editorial board, endorsed Republican Sam Brown, a military veteran and businessman, over incumbent Democrat Jacky Rosen. “If Democrats take control of Congress and Kamala Harris wins the Oval Office, expect Sen. Rosen to jettison her ‘moderate’ façade and support a host of extreme policies that remake the nation’s institutions in service to a radical progressive agenda,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.
The Detroit News in Michigan also endorsed a Republican for Senate, backing former congressman Mike Rogers over Democratic U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin. The News said Rogers has “expertise” and a “mature voice,” and “was always among the best and brightest of Michigan’s political leadership corps.” The paper said that Slotkin has “voted with the Biden-Harris administration 100% of the time over the past four years.”
The Detroit Free Press, on the other hand, endorsed Slotkin, accusing Rogers of practicing “transactional politics” and coming across as “a mishmash of opportunism, fearmongering and shopworn policy platitudes.”
Some major battleground state papers didn’t endorse candidates in the Senate race. Some, like the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel and the Dayton Daily News, have long been hesitant to endorse political candidates. The Arizona Republic stopped endorsing candidates in 2020. The Baltimore Sun, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville are among the newspapers that are no longer endorsing candidates.
National Review didn’t identify any Arizona or Montana papers that endorsed in this year’s Senate races.
Newspapers have increasingly been getting out of the endorsement business, in part because they have little impact on big races, but also because they can lead to distrust among readers who sometimes struggle to differentiate between news and opinion content.
“Nobody knows the distinction between the editorial board and the reporters, and that’s our fault for not telling them,” one journalist told the Nieman Labs journalism think tank in 2022. “Every four years we shoot ourselves in the foot.”
In addition, many papers just don’t have the manpower anymore to interview all the state and local candidates running for election in their communities.
Ahead of the 2020 election, the McClatchy newspaper chain announced that its papers wouldn’t offer endorsements unless they interviewed both candidates. In 2022, Alden Global Capital, the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain, announced that its papers would cease endorsing candidates in presidential, Senate, and gubernatorial elections.
In a 2022 internal memo, leaders of the Gannett newspaper chain advised the heads of their more than 200 papers to cut back on endorsements and national opinion writing. They said that opinion columns are “among our least read content” and are often cited by readers as a reason for canceling their subscriptions.
“Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” the Gannett leaders wrote. “They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.”