Endorsements are not predictions

October 30th, 2008 at 10:53am Wally Haas

Some readers who have called to complain about endorsements say we picked Candidate A over Candidate B because we thought Candidate A was going to win. Nope.

In fact, there are endorsements we’ve made where I’m quite certain the candidate we DID NOT recommend is going to win. Our process is to pick the person we think is best, regardless of that person’s chance to win the election.

An example is our endorsement for the Green Party’s Rich Whitney for governor in 2006. We knew he wouldn’t win, but we thought he was the best person for the job.  Given the general disarray of Illinois politics, I’m sure there are a lot of people who wish he would have won.

We work hard on endorsements, which is why some of them seem so late this year. Members of the Editorial Board have attended candidate forums and we’ve hosted a few forums here at the News Tower. We’ve had joint appearances/mini debates here also,  a couple of individual sessions here and we’ve done phone interviews with candidates we did not see in person.

We’ve poured through our archives to see what kinds of headlines candidates have made. We’ve checked Web sites, campaign material and talked to folks who have expertise in the various positions candidates are seeking.

Most of the interviewing has been done by three people: Chuck Sweeney, Mary Kaull and me. We have digital recordings of the interviews here and videos of the joint appearances that are made available to the full Editorial Board before we talk about a race.

All that research sometimes yields only a couple of paragraphs when we sit down to write. It may not seem cost effective, but we take our responsibility to make recommendations in elections very seriously.

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