The only political endorsements I’ve ever been involved in were more than 30 years ago at the Yale Daily News, mostly for low-stakes student government contests.
During my 21 years at The Times, I worked on the news side, which meant zero involvement in opinion, endorsements or otherwise. And by the time I got to the Forward in 2019, we’d been out of the endorsement business for nearly two decades.
Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish, socialist broadsheet, the Forward was, for its first century, a copious endorser whose choices could move thousands of votes, especially in New York City. The English Forward that Seth Lipsky created in 1990 continued that tradition.
When I called Lipsky up this week to talk endorsements, he shared a story he’s told before about a contentious meeting of the Forward Association — the paper’s governing body — over whether to endorse New York Mayor David Dinkins for reelection in 1993. The contentious part concerned the mayor’s handling of the Crown Heights riots, which had cleaved the Brooklyn neighborhood’s Black and Orthodox Jewish residents.
“They were debating it, and one guy finally says, ‘Well I just don’t think we ought to get too close to the religious,’” Lipsky recalled. “There was an audible gasp of horror around the room when the inappropriateness of that remark sunk in.
“Then there was a guy, I think he was 104 years old, very, very tall and slim, like 6-and-a-half feet,” Lipsky continued. “He gets himself upright and starts shaking his fist. He says, ‘Back in the Pale, during the pogroms, we sided with the religious.’”
The room quieted, and eventually Lipsky was told: “OK, we expect the Forward to endorse Mayor Dinkins for reelection — but not too enthusiastically.”
The endorsement called Dinkins the “logical” choice and “a worthy, if embattled, figure.” The editors said they were “impressed with the courage” he’d “shown over a long career toward Jewish concerns.” They noted the mayor had been quick to denounce the antisemitism of Louis Farrakhan, and had rushed to Israel “to be on Jewish soil when it was under attack by Iraqi Scuds.”
A few years later, in 1996, the Forward endorsed Bill Clinton — as it had in 1992 — in part because it believed him to be better for Israel than his Republican challenger, Sen. Bob Dole. The endorsement dismissed “the so-called character question” regarding Clinton, saying, “we have developed increasing respect for the cheerfulness with which the president is brushing off his accusers.”
Finally, in the last presidential endorsement we’ve been able to find in our archives, the Forward backed Al Gore in 2000, praising his “courage and prescience in addressing issues other politicians ignored,” and concluding, “No candidate has ever been more qualified for the presidency.”
By 2004, when Adam Nagourney was advising me on how to cover presidential candidates, the Forward refrained from endorsements because it was seeking 501(c)(3) tax status. Ditto when Jane Eisner became editor-in-chief in 2008 and Barack Obama was running against John McCain. (The change came through in 2009.)
Eisner came from The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she’d run the editorial page and written lots of endorsements. Controversial ones, like picking Sam Katz, a Republican, over John Street for mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city (Katz lost), and tedious but terrifically important ones for scores of elected judges the public knows precious little about.
Also for president: Eisner remembered it was “complicated” writing the editorial backing Clinton for reelecton in 1996 after having said he should resign if he’d lied under oath about Monica Lewinsky.
“I always felt that it was a really strong public duty,” she said of endorsements when we spoke on Wednesday. “I do think newspapers ought to stand for something — and you can do that without biasing your newsroom.”
Eisner told me she was “appalled” at the moves by Bezos and Soon-Shiong, calling their decisions “really distressing.”
Also simplistic and short-sighted. Because the point of endorsements, Eisner pointed out, is not just to persuade voters. Especially this year, “with such a polarized electorate, there’s probably little chance of that,” she said.
“It’s a statement of values,” Eisner explained, “and a way of holding people accountable. It gives you a stronger position to criticize them later.”
I heartily endorse that statement.
