It’s political endorsement season, a time that strikes terror into the heart of every candidate and existential ennui into those of the Chronicle editorial board – that curmudgeonly octopus of the News staff, the news and managing editors, and the publisher, all of whom take part in the seasonal ritual. (In recent years Editor Louis Black, thoroughly enervated by the process over nearly three decades, has decamped to more abstract cultural climes.) Since it’s party primary time, theoretically that at least doubles the number of potential endorsement reports, meetings, discussions – but in practice, in the People’s Mostly Democratic Republic of Travis County, we are largely confined to the Democratic races, and then only races actually contested. But there are quite a few of those this year – as you will see if you review <bour results; and as I write, it’s not even certain we can fit them all into a single issue. Ain’t democracy grand?
When everybody’s available, there are about 10 of us on the “board” in all, although we all wear several hats around here and in particular, unlike conventional editorialists, wear both reporting and endorsing hats at this time of year. That means some of us are simultaneously interviewing candidates on the fly and reporting back to our colleagues as we gather and form a consensus on the various races. (“Consensus” isn’t unanimity; we do the best we can in each race, determine a published recommendation, and then head to the polls, each on our own.) As we note, we endorse only in contested races – we figure the parties can designate their own unopposed appointments – and we meet directly as a group with candidates only if we haven’t been able to establish a clear choice based on available candidate information.
Partly that’s a concession to time and space (here’s a shout-out to Cafe Hornitos, the friendly restaurant up the block which briefly provides our conference room during this season), and partly it’s an acknowledgment that voters get even less opportunity to “meet the candidates” and must rely on whatever published sources and word-of-mouth they can find.
Look and Leap
There’s frankly not a lot of information out there. We do this for a living (alas), and as we go to press Wednesday for an early voting period that begins Tuesday, there are a handful of bottom-ballot candidates who still haven’t responded to our inquiries – they filed for office, for gosh sakes, but we can’t actually expect them to be accessible to reporters. (Of course, some politicians don’t like to talk to the Chronicle because we’re insufficiently deferential. Breaks our hearts. A few dodge our phone calls initially because they haven’t yet drawn an opponent – then when a challenger files, suddenly they’re all, “When can we have coffee?” It’s nice to be loved.)
In a few races, we were pleased and discomfited to find more than one genuinely qualified candidate. That made our decisions more difficult, while confirming there are still plenty of good, accomplished folks out there who enter public service for the right reasons. In endorsing, we try to abide by the voting booth rule – you have to choose one, and one only – although we occasionally can’t come to agreement and issue a split endorsement (didn’t happen this year, so far). There is also a certain comedy in watching candidates jump from race to race during the filing period, hoping for a slot either without an opponent or with one they can easily defeat. Moreover, there’s entirely too much “insiderism” among the courthouse crowd, where entitled Dem lawyers work the hallways until they decide they’re ready to run for a judgeship under the motto, “It’s my turn.”
If that’s what the candidate appears to think, then for us, it ain’t.
A Grain of Salt
Beyond our sincere recommendations, the more substantive purpose of our endorsements is to provide useful voter information. The bulk of that information you will find in our “Primary Intelligence” feature, in which we focus on the local races of particular interest (turning to statewide races next week). Since so many of the primaries are judicial races, Jordan Smith carried the heaviest portion of that assignment this time around, as she’s our primary criminal justice/courthouse reporter. We all have misgivings about electing judges, who are required to campaign for votes but then expected to judge impartially. To their credit, most of the Travis County judicial candidates compete – rhetorically, at least, when they’re talking to the Chronicle – to declare their commitments to alternative, innovative, or restorative justice. One can hope that when they’re addressing other audiences – say the folks at the Austin Police Association – they don’t blindly shift to trumpeting how tough on crime they’ll be.
By the way, we don’t feel obligated to confine our reporting to that pompous word “issues,” wielded like a cudgel by folks who seem to believe candidates can be judged entirely as an accumulation of political opinions, apart from their character and judgment. Especially in primaries, expressed opinions are often indistinguishable – we’re trying to predict considered behavior and judgment in office, not just whether a candidate agrees with us on every “issue.” The more they strain to tell us what they believe we want to hear, the less likely we are to trust it.
On the public forum front, this year the local Dems tried something new – a universal candidate affair at the Eastside Millennium center, where three dozen or more candidates got two to five minutes each to woo a few hundred Dem loyalists. It was an admirable idea (very helpful, by the way, to reporters buttonholing candidates on the wing), though doing it by the gross and in a literal roller rink with roller-rink acoustics somewhat undermined the effort. Perhaps it can be refined a bit next time around – maybe a required online forum for each Dem hopeful?
In the meantime, we certainly share your inevitable doubts about our choices. Nevertheless, we hope you find our endorsements helpful as a thumbnail of things to consider on the way to the voting booth and as an engaging alternative to more reflexively conventional sources. If you can’t bear reading about them, it’s unlikely you’ll care to vote for them.
This article appears in February 12 • 2010.
