Endorsement Watch - Seattle Times vs The Stranger

Update:

Well, well, well, speaking of misleading (and kinda dirty) campaign tricks. 

I visited Liza Rankin's campaign page today to check her endorsements. Know what I found? On that page, she has 2023 INDIVIDUAL endorsements broken up by a listing of 2019 GROUP endorsements complete with quotes and logos. 

Now there is a notation that they are from 2019 but any voter just scrolling that page (as I did quickly the first time) might miss the notation and think that ALL those groups endorsed her for 2023. 

What makes it really bad is that she has MLK Labor on that section and they just endorsed her opponent, Debbie Carlsen. 

She has FUSE Washington and they haven't even announced their guide yet.

She has the 37th Dems who are not endorsing until the general election. (There is no candidate from that region there so no primary endorsement.) 

Does she think this is sly and those dumb voters won't notice? Or is it "see how many groups liked me in 2019 and I'll update it when I get endorsed." Except MLK Labor didn't endorse her in 2023 so she should take that down. 

I guess those high-powered (and expensive) campaign managers told her that no one would notice.

They are wrong. And I just tweeted this out to other media sources. 

end of update

The Seattle Times is doling out their endorsements slowly (although they do have regional ground to cover) and so far have only done Seattle School Board endorsements for the two races that do not feature an incumbent. They endorsed Ben Gitenstein in District 3 and Gina Topp in District 6. 

I await what they will say or do for the two incumbents, Liza Rankin in District 1, and Lisa Rivera Smith in District 2. If their recent swipes at the entire Board in a couple of editorials are any indication, anything could happen. It could be they will endorse one and not the other but I think it will be both or nothing.

Now The Stranger is - clearly - a different editorial board. I have heard that The Stranger loves a toughie (they loved Betty Patu who told them that she once took a gun away from a kid at a school) but they are also careful to examine an incumbent's record. 

When Rankin last ran, The Stranger endorsed her. The Times endorsed her very worthy opponent, Eric Blumhagen. 

When Rivera Smith ran neither The Stranger nor the Times made an endorsement in the race since she turned out to be the only candidate. It will be interesting how those two newspapers go this time when she does have a challenger in candidate Christina Posten. 

I take other electeds endorsements with a grain of salt because there is the "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" for them. I see that Representative Gerry Pollet gives a big endorsement at Rankin's website saying, "She was the only school board member in the state of Washington who spent a year ..." on Special Education. Well, at least for the Seattle School Board, that was her assigned job. The Board assigns one member to be the point person for the Legislature. They can't all go down to Olympia. 

He laughably states that she has been "authentically engaging with community" which simply is not true. But other electeds only take the word of the person they are endorsing for what they have done in office.  

One thing that seems wrong is that at the MLK Labor website, their endorsement clearly says "Debbie Carlsen" but Rankin's website says SHE has the endorsement. I'll look into this. She also claims to be endorsed by FUSE but their website says they have not yet released their guide.  I may have to check on all her union endorsements.

But she does have the endorsement of ....Tracy Castro Gill so enough said.

Thoughts?