Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned from his job on Friday after the paper announced that it would not be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election.
Max Tani, a media editor with Semafor, wrote in a post on X that Kagan had confirmed to him that he had “resigned from the Post following” the paper’s decision to not issue an endorsement of either Harris or former President Donald Trump.
In an opinion piece written by William Lewis, a publisher and chief executive officer for the newspaper, the Post explained that they were “returning to” their “roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”
The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.
As our Editorial Board wrote in 1960:
“The Washington Post has not ‘endorsed’ either candidate in the presidential campaign. That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections. The unusual circumstances of the 1952 election led us to make an exception when we endorsed General Eisenhower prior to the nominating conventions and reiterated our endorsement during the campaign. In the light of hindsight we retain the view that the arguments for his nomination and election were compelling. But hindsight also has convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation’s Capital to have avoided formal endorsement.”
Former executive editor for the Washington Post, Marty Baron criticized the newspaper’s decision to not endorse a candidate as being “cowardice” and wrote that Trump would “see this as an invitation to further intimidate” Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
The non-endorsement of Harris in the election comes after the Los Angeles Times, the hometown newspaper of Harris, also refused to endorse a candidate, despite previously endorsing President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama.
Harris has also faced non-endorsements from the Teamsters Union, even though polling showed that nearly 60 percent of the Teamsters members supported Trump, while 34 percent expressed support for Harris.
