Why we are endorsing political candidates
With every city, state or federal election cycle comes the inevitable drumbeat around the supposed ineffectuality of newspaper and editorial endorsements of political candidates.
The argument against editorial endorsements is often framed through the lens of a general mistrust of media among voters. The thinking goes that as news media has become increasingly fragmented – owing largely to the decline of print publications – and as voters are more inclined to consume hyper-partisan coverage that hews to their political philosophies, the purported objectivity of an editorial endorsement carries little weight.
At New York Slant, we are in the nascent stages of building that level of trust among our readership. Since our launch in January, we have been diligent in providing balanced coverage on a wide variety of issues, from education to housing to public safety, publishing op-ed articles from voices on all points of the political spectrum. And as a relatively new platform for opinion and analysis, the logical next step in solidifying our editorial voice is by weighing in on political races that we view as consequential in shaping the overall landscape of New York City and state government.
Our goal in endorsing political candidates is to stray from the predictability that tends to plague other publications. As an editorial board, it would be a dereliction of duty to inflect our individual political views in endorsing a candidate for public office without strong consideration for the politics of a given district or municipality and the issues that are important to their potential constituents. It would make little sense, for instance, to endorse a candidate purely out of our own political biases in a state Senate or Assembly district that trends Democratic or Republican.
We do not aim to be partisan, but rather to take a comprehensive view of the ideal qualities a candidate for public office should hold, and press candidates for specifics on issues of the moment – be it ethics reform, common core education standards or raising the minimum wage, among others.
Endorsing candidates will also give Slant an opportunity to keep a record of candidates’ positions for future accountability. If, say, a Senate candidate came out firmly in favor of ethics reform during an endorsement interview, only to vote against it when elected to office, our record of his or her positions would invite greater journalistic scrutiny from our own reporters and, hopefully, other media outlets throughout New York.
Slant will have a multi-step endorsement process determined by our five-member editorial board, which includes City & State CEO Tom Allon, Editorial Director Michael Johnson, Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero, New York Nonprofit Media Editor-at-Large Aimée Simpierre and myself. We will first select the races that we wish to weigh in on, dependent mostly on how competitive they project to be – the Slant endorsement will not simply be a rubber stamp for candidates running with token opposition. We will then circulate a basic questionnaire for candidates to fill out. Their answers will serve as a primer for us ahead of in-person interviews, which we will schedule with each candidate in a given race, including those running on third-party ballot lines. Ideally, we will then schedule the publication of our endorsements to run the week prior to the election.
The first races for which Slant will endorse candidates are the April 19 special elections in the 65th Assembly district race in Lower Manhattan and the 9thSenate district race in Nassau County – offices that were vacated due to the recent convictions of former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, respectively. These races are symbolic in that they could represent a repudiation of the unethical behavior of the prior officeholders, but also – in the case of the Skelos seat – be potentially determinative in shifting the balance of power in the Senate, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.
As Slant endorses in numerous political races this year, we hope to satisfy our objective of providing an unbiased perspective with an eye toward civic engagement. Our goal is not to sway voters in one direction, but to establish consistent criteria for public office that will hopefully be seen as a reliable standard for editorial endorsements in New York City and state.