The Star’s editorial board is publishing a series of voter recommendations in Kansas and Missouri in the November election. We’ve long encouraged readers to vote, and voting means making tough choices. It’s my belief that if we’re asking voters to do the tough work of democracy, then we can’t in good conscience sit on the sidelines.
That in a nutshell is why The Star makes recommendations in elections. We don’t expect our endorsements to sway a great many voters, though we’re told they do from time to time. Indeed, most of the races we offer endorsements in are so well-publicized that many readers will have made up their minds long ago.
Still, there is value in the work my colleagues and I have done in evaluating these races and making a call, sometimes a very close one. In each recommendation, I hope you’ll find more than just an opinion. You should see a clear framing of the stakes in that particular election — a reason to care about the outcome, no matter your political preferences. You should also see clearly articulated specifics for why we favor this candidate or disfavor another.
It’s important to me, as editorial page editor, that our endorsements are useful to readers who don’t agree with us at all. Those readers should find tangible arguments with which they can engage, disagree with or ignore. But we hope a reader leaves our endorsements with a clearer sense of what’s important about the race, and what the issues most at stake are.
There is a great deal of discussion nationwide about whether, given how divided readers are, and how made up most folks’ minds are about politics, newspapers like ours should even offer an opinion. People on both sides can be so angry these days. Why anger half your audience when the prospects of changing minds are so thin?
Papers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, about 200 in all, announced last week that none of them will offer an endorsement for the presidency or in statewide races in 2024, for instance. And all over the country, different papers have made similar decisions. In the 2020 primary, even The New York Times punted — offering two endorsements, one each for Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. That same year, the Pulitzer-winning editorial board at The Dallas Morning News, which had four years before made Hillary Clinton the first Democrat to win its endorsement in 76 years, offered opinions on the issues in the race but kept silent about the choice voters would face in the ballot booth.
Readers deserve to know where an editorial board stands, and — just as important — to be given clear reasons why. Those reasons are key because the heart of any endorsement should be an invitation to discuss, to engage, to rebut or amplify. We are, after all, not so much telling readers how to vote, but how we’d vote — and why.
That’s important work. When the races are low-profile, and seldom in the news, we feel our job is even more vital. Many voters will come to the ballot without basic information about the candidates, and we strive to make our endorsements in those races informative about the dynamics of the race. We ground our recommendation on articulable reasons drawn from the candidates’ statements, background and their record.
We’re making recommendations in just a handful of races — from Jackson County executive to Kansas governor — and four ballot initiatives we considered especially important.
It’s purely a matter of bandwidth. Researching each of these endorsements takes a good deal of time, not just for the writing and editing, but in seeking out and inviting each Democratic and Republican candidate in every race to come meet in person with the board. That’s not so easy these days; more and more Republican candidates have chosen to refuse — often, it must be said, with very poor manners — these invitations.
They seem to believe there’s more votes in assuring their base that they are indifferent to the so-called liberal media than in meeting for an hour to take tough but fair questions and explain their record and goals.
It’s true that The Star’s endorsements this year will fall more heavily toward Democrats than Republicans. That trend has accelerated since 2020 and the Big Lie, and as so many GOP candidates have stood mum — or worse — in the face of the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. It’s hard to take seriously a candidate who is willing to tolerate sedition.
But most does not mean all. We look hard for Republicans who seem willing to exert even the tiniest independence, or who are just demonstrably more competent than their opponent. Besides, the fallacy is that the value of an endorsement is in whose campaign it recommends. We see the value in the way it frames the issues in a race and makes tangible arguments with which all voters should be able to engage.
I’ll see you at the polls.
