Former Daily News colleague Denis Kennedy took time today to remind me that the paper has always endorsed mayoral candidates. For those who don't know Denis covered City Hall back in The Day. He still lives in the city.
It’s true that the paper has endorsed for a long time. They consistently backed Byron and Dick Sullivan when they were mayor. I remember sitting in on many endorsement meetings on local and state races when I was there in the 80s and 90s. They were interesting discussions, but never as sinister as some would believe.
The DN backed Ed Molin, Lisa Mead and Jack Bradshaw for mayor multiple times, with mixed results. More recently, John Moak has been endorsed twice in a row.
They endorsed Ed during his biennial tussles with Peter Matthews: in 1985 (he lost), 1987 (he won) and 1989, when he was unseated by Peter. Jack Bradshaw was endorsed when he ran against Peter and lost in 1991. (The paper never endorsed Peter for mayor, but he often told me that was fine with him, considering some in town viewed it as a kiss of death. When he was working on one of Peter’s campaigns, Dan Raycroft half-jokingly asked me to thank Cal for not endorsing him.) Sticking with Molin again, the DN endorsed him over Lisa when she won the vacant seat in 1993. Lisa got the endorsement when she beat Byron in 1995.
After I left the paper, I seem to remember they endorsed Bradshaw in 1997 over Mary Carrier (there’s that kiss of death again), Lisa over Carrier in 1999 (she won), Lisa over Lavender in 01 (she lost), Clancy over Lavender in 03, and Moak the last two times.
That’s a batting average of a little over .500 -- backing seven eventual winners in the last twelve races. With the exception of Peter, Mary and Al, they have endorsed incumbents for re-election.
You can imagine that I often got some pushback from endorsement decisions when I was at City Hall. I pointed out that while I was in on the meetings, I did not vote on the final mayoral decisions. I got defensive only when someone suggested the endorsement affected my coverage of the races; as you can attest when you took over my beat, that was never a factor in our reporting.
I can attest to that since I didn't even know we endorsed candidates. See, all you agenda-mongers out there. Newspapers and reporters can't be controlled or agenda driven. We're not organized enough. Like herding a bunch of drunken cats.
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