Vice President Kamala Harris is the first presidential candidate in modern history to become her party's nominee without having been on a state primary ballot as a presidential candidate. She "secured" the nomination 96 days ago after President Joe Biden dropped out, but she has yet to do an official press conference and take questions from the media.
While it's unclear if that factor has played a role, two national newspapers that historically back Democratic candidates have decided to break tradition and not endorse a candidate for the November 5 election. The Washington Post – for the first time in 36 years – has chosen that route, explaining today it was "returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," according to publisher and CEO Will Lewis. A post on X states the decision not to publish an endorsement drafted by staffers was made by The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos.
One day earlier, The Los Angeles Times – which endorsed Barack Obama for both of his campaigns, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020 – said it will not be endorsing a candidate for president for the first time since 2008 … a decision that was far from unanimous among the editorial team.
AFN spoke with Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, who says the new owner of the LA Times – Patrick Soon-Shiong – basically told the editorial board the paper should let readers make their own decision and provide them both the positive and negative facts about the policies of both candidates.
Editorial board member Mariel Garza quit over the move. One Times reporter wrote he was "gutted" by the move in a letter to the editor.
Thomasson points out Soon-Shiong was a Hillary Trump supporter in 2016 but saw his support morph to Donald Trump in 2020. "He is making his own decisions with his own eyes," says the family advocate, "and it's obvious that the Democrat Party has veered leftward over a cliff."
Thomasson suggests the LA Times' neutrality may be part of a bigger trend in the mainstream media: a willingness to overlook lies spoken by a candidate, but not tolerate his or her refusal to hold a press conference.
"My opinion is the big media has a limit to their patience," he tells AFN. "They played along for a while, they drank the Kool-Aid, but Kamala won't answer the questions – and that's got to be frustrating to them."
Meanwhile, Thomasson fears voters in the tight presidential election could hand the nuclear codes to a candidate who hasn't been tested. "Life is getting more dangerous from internal crime, from dangerous invasions, from the threat of war with terrible foreign powers," he describes.
