Primary election season is here, and that means candidate endorsements from the editorial board
It might be easy to forget in all of the coronavirus madness that it’s election season. That also means that it’s endorsement season.
But this is an endorsement season unlike any I have ever been through.
As we have typically done in elections past, the Idaho Statesman editorial board is endorsing candidates running for public office. For the May 19 primary, we have political party races in a number of positions, including U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Idaho Senate and Idaho House, and county commissioners.
Our typical practice is to interview the candidates, and we have a fairly strict rule that we won’t endorse a candidate who doesn’t agree to do an interview with us.
This year has been particularly challenging, since we’re not able to do in-person, face-to-face interviews. Instead, we’ve relied on Zoom video conferencing, something many of us have gotten used to over the past few weeks.
We’re using Zoom because we also need to record the meetings for board members who might have to miss a meeting here and there.
We’ve scheduled 11 interviews in total, and we’ve held seven so far. We’re inviting candidates to interview together, so that we have a little back-and-forth and so that board members can ask questions all at once and gauge how candidates react together.
I have to say, the meetings have gone relatively smoothly and with very few hitches (knocking on wood for the remaining meetings). It’s not as good as in-person, but it still works pretty well.
Why do we even still do endorsements? We feel endorsements still have tremendous value for our readers. An endorsement can help reassure a voter that they’re making the right choice, particularly if you find yourself agreeing with the points made in our editorials. In our endorsement editorial, we explain our reasoning, so that readers can agree or disagree with our position. For example, if we choose to endorse one candidate because she favors Medicaid expansion, while her opponent does not, you, as a voter, may prefer the candidate who opposes Medicaid expansion.
We also believe that having access to candidates and interviewing them directly provides a valuable service to readers who may never get a chance to meet a candidate. That’s also why we won’t issue an endorsement if we can’t interview them ourselves.
Can you disagree with an endorsement? Of course. Endorsements are not meant to tell you how to vote. They’re simply recommendations based on our editorial board members’ preferences, political positions and opinions of how the candidates conduct themselves.
Are we partisan? No, we are not. We choose the candidate we think will be the best person for the job. In the primary, we are endorsing candidates in both Republican and Democratic races, as members of the same party face off.
Who’s on the editorial board? Our publisher Rusty Dodge; editor Christina Lords; me; digital growth editor Dana Oland; breaking news editor Jim Keyser; and three community members: Bob Kustra, Sophie Sestero and Mike Wetherell.
As with all editorials, I write the editorials with input from all the members. As we discuss our positions, I take notes of what board members are saying and incorporate those thoughts into the editorial.
Are editorials separate from the newsroom? I thought newspapers were supposed to be unbiased. Yes, our editorials are separate from our newsroom and do not reflect the opinions of reporters, who remain unbiased in their reporting.
Over the next couple of weeks, keep an eye out in the paper and at idahostatesman.com for our endorsements in a wide range of races. Hope you’ll follow along and read our endorsements and weigh in as you fill out your ballot at home.
