Vice President Kamala Harris’s hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, will not deliver a 2024 presidential endorsement.
The paper’s lack of an endorsement is a slight to Harris. The Times endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008.
The decision not to endorse Harris came from the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shion, Semafor’s Max Tani reported Tuesday:
[A]ccording to two people familiar with the situation, executive editor Terry Tang told editorial board staff earlier this month that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate in the presidential election this cycle, a decision that came from the paper’s owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a doctor who made his fortune in the healthcare industry.
The paper did not explain its decision, though it noted at the bottom of its online endorsement page that “the editorial board endorses selectively, choosing the most consequential races in which to make recommendations.”
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It wouldn’t be the first time since he bought the paper in 2018 that owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong had overruled the wishes of the paper’s editorial board. In 2020, the paper met with Democratic candidates for president for interviews with the intention of making a pick in the race. But after deciding to endorse Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic, at the last minute Soon-Shiong overruled its leadership and said there would be no endorsement in the primary race (the paper endorsed Joe Biden in the general election).
After Richard Nixon won reelection in 1972 and then resigned from the presidency in the wake of Watergate, the paper stopped endorsing candidates. Throughout Nixon’s career, the Times had backed the California Republican throughout his House, senate, and presidential campaigns. Its next endorsement came about 30 years later in 2008.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
