The Endorsement Vacuum

THE RECENT JUNE PRIMARY DOUBLED as an unlikely Southern California media milestone: It was the first modern election in which the Los Angeles Times provided no endorsements on the local candidates and measures on the ballot. 

The death of the paper’s once-vaunted endorsements received little in the way of public notice, but the disappearance has been acutely felt — and bemoaned — around town. The impact of any one endorsement is certainly debatable, but the editorial board carried particular weight in down-ballot races where voters tend to know little, if anything, about the candidates. 

“It’s unfortunate to have the largest paper in the state totally out of the game on this,” said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who is running for Insurance Commissioner and made it into the November runoff. “People turn to papers like the Times for wise counsel on their votes.” 

“It was a huge absence in the local political scene this cycle,” said Sarah Leonard Sheahan, a former Deputy Mayor of the city of L.A. and veteran political communications consultant who worked on Karen Bass’ 2022 campaign and Adam Miller’s recent campaign. “There just isn’t a body that is bringing that same sort of thoughtful scrutiny to the races.”

“There was this vacuum,” added Zev Yaroslavsky, who served roughly 20 years each as an L.A. City Councilmember and L.A. County Supervisor. “I got more calls than ever before,” he continued, with friends and associates asking, “‘Who should I vote for for judge? How are you voting for the Board of Equalization?’ Things people don’t pay attention to.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) echoed Yaroslavsky’s point, saying she must have had 50 people text or email her as they stared blankly at the judges on their ballots. 

And the void wasn’t just felt by Democrats. 

“For the once great L.A. Times to be absent from such a consequential conversation is a real lost opportunity,” said Roxanne Hoge, chair of L.A. County’s Republican Party, noting, “whether you are someone that would use the Times’ endorsement as a guidepost for how not to vote or how to vote.”

What Happened to the Endorsements?

Before each primary and general election, the Times reliably published its slate of who and what to support on California’s lengthy ballot, from local school board trustees to Superior Court judges, all the way up to the mayor and governor. Ballot measures and propositions for city, county and state voters also got a close examination and recommendation by the Times. 

Then came the 2024 presidential election, when the Times’ editorial board – a part of the paper’s opinion section which handles endorsements – was rocked by tumult, to put it mildly. 

Weeks before the November 2024 election, the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked the board from moving ahead with a planned endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The move prompted the resignation of Mariel Garza, then the editorials editor, the first in an exodus of her staff. The editorial board, which then numbered just over a half-dozen, went down to zero full-time staffers after its final member retired from the newspaper in early 2025. 

In the intervening months, the newspaper did not publicly reconstitute the editorial board. Neither Soon-Shiong nor the newspaper’s communications department responded to messages seeking comment. (This reporter worked for the Times from 2014 to 2025.) 

When the 2026 primary race rolled around, the boardless Times was more or less incapable of issuing endorsements in the manner it once had. And so, for this electoral cycle, none were published, although the paper did release detailed voter guides on each race that were produced by the newsroom’s journalists, who are separate from the opinion section, as it has done in previous cycles. Those guides do not recommend specific candidates or measures. 

“I don’t think everyone fully realized in 2024 that the paper declining endorsements would permanently open up a vacuum in L.A.,” said Jamarah Hayner, a Democratic strategist who managed George Gascón’s successful 2020 campaign for District Attorney and has worked for Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michael Bloomberg.

Jim Newton, an author and veteran L.A. journalist who was editor of the editorial pages from 2007 to 2010, went further, arguing that mishandling of the 2024 presidential endorsement and the furor that followed marked the end of the editorial board’s credibility as “a meaningful voice in civic life.” (Though such a voice would also require the existence of an editorial board.)

Newton lamented the loss of the Times’ endorsements, but also cautioned that given the fiasco of 2024, “Be careful what you wish for.”

If the newspaper had issued endorsements in the recent election, he said, they “would have been regarded by many people as just sort of an expression of Patrick Soon-Shiong’s allegiances or hopes to curry favor with the Trump administration or whatever.”

“Once the endorsement process has that taint to it, I think it's hard for it to have the constructive contribution that it ought to have,” Newton said.

The Times’ decision not to endorse in local races, which was never publicly announced, comes on the heels of the New York Times announcing in 2024 that they would no longer endorse local candidates. (That paper still makes presidential endorsements.)

How the Times Endorsement Process Worked

The process by which the newspaper issued endorsements was painstaking. The board would speak to all candidates for a given elected office and to opposing sides of ballot measures, preferably in person. But that was only part of the job. 

Although editorial board members followed the Times’ newsroom coverage, they also did their own independent reporting and research.

The staff “spent hours talking to people who knew them, worked with them, who were critical of them,” said Garza, who was on the editorial board for a decade and after her resignation co-founded Golden State, a nonpartisan California news outlet.

In the 2024 election, for example, the paper provided endorsements on 10 statewide propositions, three L.A. City Council races, six amendments to the City Charter, the district attorney race, three countywide measures, four community college district board seats, three L.A. school board seats, a bond measure for L.A. Unified, five L.A. Superior court races, four state legislative seats and five congressional races. 

Those endorsements in 2024 were issued before the controversy over the presidential endorsement triggered a staff (and subscriber) uproar.

Friedman was among those who received the paper’s endorsement that year in the crowded race to fill Sen. Adam Schiff’s Congressional seat. Friedman said she was surprised by how thorough the endorsement process was. “There were six people who were subject matter experts and had been following my legislation and asking very hard questions,” she recalled of her questioners. 

Afterward, Friedman said, “I thought I had tanked the interview.” 

She was surprised that after the grilling, the newspaper’s editorial board phoned former colleagues across the political divide to quiz them on working with her. 

Yaroslavsky, who appeared before the editorial board several times when seeking reelection or when pushing a ballot measure, quipped that it was “like an oral exam for a PhD thesis.”

After the extensive research, the board then met to hash out whom and what to support. Sometimes there was consensus. Sometimes there was division.

“We had very respectful, and yes, sometimes vigorous, debates but we all came at it from a place of what was best for Californians,” said Sewell Chan, who was editor of the editorial pages from 2020 to 2021. 

The newspaper did not always endorse in major races. From 1976 until 2008, the editorial board refrained from offering recommendations in the presidential and gubernatorial elections, but generally provided them in local races.

How Much Did the Endorsements Actually Matter?

Politicians, political strategists and former board members agreed that endorsements carried the most weight in races in which candidates had received little, if any, news coverage, and the Times was often one of, if not the only, news organizations examining their record, like a judicial seat or a community college board post.

“My own perspective is that editorial board endorsements are more impactful and influential as you go down the ballot,” Garza said. 

Hayner, the Democratic political strategist and consultant, agreed that the paper’s endorsement power was race-specific.

“For something lower profile like a judicial race, I can see a large percentage of voters missing the Times’ recommendations,” Hayner said, along with ballot measures. “But the paper’s decision to walk away from that role in the political space has created opportunities for other voices – for better or worse.”

Newton said that endorsements from the Times had the potential to change the trajectory of a candidate, especially in a crowded field. 

In the absence of the prominent newspaper’s backing, Garza suspected that social media and slate mailers – in which candidates or committees pay to be featured and recommended on a mailed flyer – could have greater impact. Garza, like others, said she was also inundated by requests for help wading through the thicket of candidates.

“I feel like I'm giving a lot of one-on-one ballot therapy to people,” Garza said. 

Chan said that there was reason to be cautious about endorsements.

“Endorsement power can be abused,” he said, citing how the paper supported the incarceration of Japanese Americans. For most of its history, the newspaper sided with business interests, opposed organized labor, and faithfully endorsed Republican presidential candidates. 

In the modern era, the paper lent its support to mostly liberal politicians, although it backed Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection, and in 2022, backed a Republican for state controller.

In the recent election, Chan said, the Times could have provided a clear-minded analysis of crowded Democratic races, particularly for governor and the L.A. mayor.

“Could the Los Angeles Times have helped meaningfully narrow the gubernatorial field by at least putting forward or suggesting who are the most serious people to consider? Could the Times have played a filtering role on the dozens of people on the ballot? Yes, it could have played that role.”