![]() “It’s just a snapshot of their point of view,” said C. Added George Arzt, another unaffiliated Democratic consultant, “You always feel that they have an open mind, and that you can convince them.”įor that reason, many of the people I spoke with saw the Times endorsement as fair-minded. “I think they sincerely wanted to try to find the best candidate,” recalled Fernando Ferrer, a onetime Bronx borough president who won the Times’ 2005 primary endorsement. The interviews themselves, by all accounts, play out like something from a high-minded middle school civics class. A Times spokesperson would not even comment on when the editorial would run, although Downes jokingly admitted that it’s coming “sometime pretty soon, before the election.” (David Freedlander profiled Randolph last year in the New York Observer.) “It’s all a collaborative process, and we speak as one voice as a board,” he added. “I help set up the interviews and I work with Eleanor Randolph, who’s done this for years,” board member Lawrence Downes, who is spearheading the endorsement process this cycle, told me, referring to another board member. Three of the other four Democratic candidates are too far behind for the Times to consider endorsing them, according to observers, and the fourth is Anthony Weiner, whom the Times has essentially said should withdraw. ![]() There are plausible reasons to believe that the Times board would endorse any of the three leading candidates-Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and former comptroller Bill Thompson-on the merits. “It’s important to get a good housekeeping seal of approval,” explained Democratic political consultant Evan Stavisky, who is not working for any of the candidates, “and as large as the Times readership is, its endorsement is seen as persuasive even to voters who don't necessarily read the paper.” With a close primary, a city with a six-to-one Democratic-to-Republican edge, and a weak Republican field, the Times’ backing in the primary and the likely run-off on October 1 could prove crucial to determining New York’s next mayor. ![]() There are more than one million digital and print Times readers in the New York City area, and that doesn’t include the many, many more who will learn whom the Times endorsed because it is an inherently newsworthy event. Some amateur tea-leaf reading suggests that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is the candidate who would stand the most to gain should Pinch pull a Punch. (The newsroom, led by executive editor Jill Abramson, is kept separate from the Opinion section.) And the principle may come into play sometime in the next few weeks, when the Times endorses a Democratic mayoral candidate for the September 10 primary. This remains true today: In an email to me last week, a Times spokesperson wrote, “The final decision is made by the editorial board, Andy Rosenthal and Arthur Sulzberger”-Rosenthal being the opinion editor and Sulzberger being Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., Punch’s son. The incident helped establish the principle that when it comes to all-important Times endorsements, the publisher can exercise final sway.
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