Leftist LA Times Editorial Page Editor Resigns in Protest After Owner Blocks Endorsement of Kamala Harris

The far-left Los Angeles Times has declined to endorse Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, marking the first time the paper has withheld support from a Democratic candidate since 2008.

The decision to break with their home-state candidate is seen as a clear sign that Harris’s support is waning, even within the most liberal of strongholds.

The paper’s refusal to endorse Harris follows a directive from its owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who reportedly blocked the editorial board’s plans.

While the paper has endorsed candidates in congressional and local elections, its refusal to weigh in on the presidency is impossible to ignore.

Sources suggest that the decision came from the top, as Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s owner, reportedly blocked any endorsement of Harris.

This isn’t the first time Soon-Shiong has intervened; he previously blocked the paper’s endorsement of Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 primaries.

The Trump campaign wasted no time in releasing a statement, mocking the Harris-Walz ticket:

“The Ls keep piling up for Kamala Harris and Tampon Tim.

In Kamala’s own home state, the LosAngelesTimes— the state’s largest newspaper — has declined to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket, despite endorsing the Democrat nominees in every election for decades.

Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job. The Timespreviously endorsed Kamala in her 2010 and 2014 races for California attorney general, as well as her 2016 race for U.S. Senate — but not this time.

It’s just the latest humiliating blow for the Harris-Walz campaign, who have also suffered stinging non-endorsements from the Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters amid a revolt by rank-and-file union members against their traditional Democrat alignment.

Everyone knows the Harris-Walz campaign is a sinking ship. Two more weeks until it’s submerged for good.”

Mariel Garza, the now-former editorial page editor at the LA Times, could not accept the decision to stay silent. Garza resigned in protest over Soon-Shiong’s decision to block the endorsement.

In a phone conversation with Sewell Chan of Columbia Journalism Review, Garza expressed her outrage:

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

“I didn’t think we were going to change our readers’ minds—our readers, for the most part, are Harris supporters,” Garza added. “We’re a very liberal paper. I didn’t think we were going to change the outcome of the election in California.

“But two things concern me: This is a point in time where you speak your conscience no matter what. And an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we’ve been writing about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his unfitness to be president, about his threats to jail his enemies. We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected.”

“It was a logical next step. And it’s perplexing to readers, and possibly suspicious, that we didn’t endorse her this time.”

Below is her full resignation obtained by CJR:

Terry,

Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence.

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.

It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?

The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.

Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.”

I still believe that’s true.

In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.

—Mariel

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