Endorsement process not for the meek

On Sunday’s Opinion page, you will read our editorial board’s endorsement for president. Each election season, when our endorsements begin to run, people call and ask me, “How could you support THAT candidate?”

Our endorsement process is more art than science and messier than sausage making, to purposely mix clichés. So to spare me phone time next week, here’s a look at the reality behind the misconceptions.

“We are not telling people how to vote.

Doug Floyd, editorial page editor, dislikes the term endorsement, because it’s misleading. “Athletes endorse products,” Doug says. “What we do is encourage a conversation.”

Some people clip our Sunday-before-the-election roundup and fill out their ballots accordingly. Others do the opposite. Mostly, though, people see our endorsements as one more voice in the conversation.

We strive to be the eyes and ears of readers who don’t have as much time, or as much access, as we do. When election season is over, we will have interviewed more than 50 candidates. But we don’t base our recommendations on these interviews alone.

“The candidates we endorse don’t receive more favorable coverage in news stories.

Our endorsement in a particular race sometimes runs in the newspaper before a reporter’s in-depth story about the race. It drives the reporter nuts. We try to maintain in our newsroom a firewall between news writers and opinion writers. Reporters don’t know which candidates we will be endorsing. It should be as much a surprise to them as it is to our readers. And sometimes it’s just as bewildering.

So don’t take endorsement anger out on the reporters. They are working way too hard this election season. And those of us on the opinion side of the firewall don’t make their jobs any easier.

“We are not an all-Republican or an all-Democrat editorial board.

There are six of us on the board – Stacey Cowles, publisher, Steve Smith, editor, Doug Floyd and three editorial writers, Gary Crooks, Dave Oliveria and me. We do not hold to the same political ideology. We have liberal opinions, conservative opinions, moderate opinions. It keeps things very interesting.

This week we gathered at my house for a five-hour session to decide some of the endorsements. We argued and ate sandwiches and laughed and guzzled coffee and looked out onto the stunning fall day and sighed with the overwhelming task of it all.

There was a sacredness to the process, though my colleagues will wince at those words, but that’s how I saw it. And it felt more sacred than ever this year because so much is at stake. The leaders we elect will face problems so complex it’s almost a joke. To provide services, our local, regional and state leaders will have to find money where there isn’t any. Our national leaders will make decisions that could send more young people to war.

“We are not rubber stamps for the publisher.

If Stacey Cowles wanted “yes” people on the editorial board, we would never have been the ones selected. None of us is “shyish” to use my nephew Max’s descriptive word for meek people. For instance, Doug will argue about your soft-drink selection if he believes it will hone your debating skills. And my brother-in-law Steve says the Nappi-women slogan should read: “No thought left unspoken.”

Stacey is granted an over-my-dead-body privilege. This means that if a majority of us disagree with him on a candidate or an issue, but he feels that the newspaper’s “institutional voice” must reflect his belief, then we concede. It doesn’t happen often.

I feel as if we editorial board members are part of the “dance of civic duty.” It’s not a pretty ballet. It reminds me of those Depression-era marathon dance contests where couples tried to endure to the end in the hope of capturing the prize.

We have 17 days left until Nov. 2. We’re dancing as fast as we can here. Hope this column clarified some of the steps.