Photo: Gary Hirschhorn/Corbis via Getty Images
New York civic life suffered a severe blow this week when the world’s most influential news organization announced that it would no longer help its readers decide who should govern New York City and state. “The Paper has no plans to take a position in New York’s Senate, House or State Assembly elections this fall, or in New York City elections next year,” Kathleen Kingsbury, the Paper’s opinion editor, said in a statement of cold indifference.
It’s unclear why the Times has stopped helping New Yorkers choose their city, state and federal leaders, something it has done since the committee was founded in 1896. According to a Times reporter, Kingsbury “did not give a reason for the change in policy.” Cost considerations can be ruled out; just last week the paper reported $104.7 million in profits last quarter and 300,000 new subscribers. The Times now has 10.8 million subscribers (10.2 million of which are digital-only), a 13.6% increase over last year.
I have met several of the newspaper’s 13 editorial board members, and spent eight years in similar roles as an editorial board member at the Daily News and the New York Sun, so I know something about how they do their work. They make a great team and regularly run impressive, thorough campaigns. Just last year, their series on terrorism and violence by right-wing political extremists was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In 2019, editorial board member Brent Staples won a Pulitzer for an editorial about race and racism that the awards committee deemed “written with extraordinary moral clarity.”
The logical extension of this fine work is to tell the reader which candidate, in the committee’s judgment, will move New York the most forward. This guidance is required, not optional. Our big, busy city is governed by an army of elected representatives: 51 City Council members, 5 borough presidents, 5 district attorneys, 1 comptroller, 1 public defender, 1 mayor, plus 12 U.S. congressional representatives, about 100 state representatives and senators, 1 governor, 1 lieutenant governor, 1 comptroller, 1 attorney general, and 2 U.S. senators.
Even in moderately competitive situations, voters each year choose from hundreds of candidates to fill a position that will control hundreds of billions of dollars of annual spending and determine New York’s streets, schools, housing, commerce, public safety, and other essential services. The average New Yorker is short on time and cannot be expected to keep up with the details of the many contests, disputes, and policy choices that take place in various districts, or the city, state, and federal battles that each official faces.
Thanks to a long-standing democratic tradition, newspaper readers rely on editorial boards to help them organize the issues, personalities and promises before Election Day around core values around which people and leaders can come together, debate and govern.
“The Commission advocates for a free and just world and believes that for society to succeed, we must strive to reconcile these values,” the Times’ website states. “The Commission has long supported a liberal state order in which freedom and progress advance through democracy and capitalism. But the Commission has also sought to guard against the excesses of these institutions by promoting honest governance, civil rights, equal opportunity, a healthy planet, and a prosperous life for the most vulnerable in society.”
These lofty goals are realized primarily through the daily investigative, reporting, and persuasive writing efforts to highlight problems, question authority, spotlight innovation, and demand change. And when the time comes to choose, it is the newspaper’s editorial watchdog who tells readers who is honest and who is lying, who is promising, and who has a conflict of interest. Local endorsements are as much a form of public service as alerting readers to snowstorms, road closures, and disease outbreaks. They also serve as carrot-and-stick incentives for candidates to address and debate issues and solutions.
Twenty-seven summers ago, as a candidate for Brooklyn City Council, I made the trek to the old Times Building on 43rd Street to nervously make the case that our district needed change. Board members agreed and supported me (“He seems well-versed in the issues facing the City Council and offers practical ideas on how to foster business development in the city’s minority communities.”). I didn’t win the primary, but my support definitely helped.
Fast forward to 2021, and The New York Times’ endorsement of Katherine Garcia in the Democratic primary for mayor helped her win by 7,000 votes over a crowded field of veteran politicians. Even if you question the logic, the committee made a compelling case for what to look for in a mayor. Past endorsements have helped develop local politicians with outsized influence nationally. Two of the most influential members of Congress, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both rose to Congress from state legislatures and won reelection with the backing of The New York Times and other newspapers.
All of this is now becoming a thing of the past. Like any other subscriber, I happily receive Wordle, recipes, and book reviews from The Times. But there is a much bigger issue at stake. New York voters, with the help and guidance of the editorial board, have given this country such first-rate leaders as Al Smith, Fiorello LaGuardia, Ed Koch, Shirley Chisholm, Jacob Javits, Mario Cuomo, Franklin Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. The Times has now foolishly thrown up its hands and decided to allow New York’s leaders to be born based not on the vast amount of reliable information collected by the paper of record, but on half-truths disseminated by politicians.
What a big blunder.
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