It’s a dying art, sadly, but at least at the Sun Gazette (and at the Falls Church News-Press, to give credit where credit is due) we take political endorsements seriously enough to actually do them.
Most other lesser media outlets have given up, if they ever did them at all. I’ve ranted and raved before at how that is another sign of the end of civilization as we know it, so I’ll take a pass on doing that this time around.
When it comes to endorsements, the Sun Gazette makes sure that even those who receive them get knocked around a little in the process. No candidate is perfect, we feel it’s important to point out their flaws and foibles – not to mention, as we’re li’l stinkers, it is also a bit of fun.
It kind of irks the candidates; one years ago bitched to me at a public event that our endorsement of him was welcomed but why did it have to be so mean? I’d looked him right in the eye (well, would have had he not been somewhat taller than me) and said “you want me to take it back in next week’s edition?” He wisely shut his mouth ☺. (You can take your guesses if you want as to who it was.)
Anyway, the reaction of candidates matters not a bit to me. I live by the principle enunciated in a line from the song “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals” by the late but still great Gilda Radner.
“If they don’t love it, they can shove it – frankly, I don’t care,” she warbled in the song. A song that I’d love to link to but probably shouldn’t, given its rather rough language (which is hilarious coming from the positively adorable and perky Ms. Radner). But you can find it on YouTube, winky, winky…
STARTING TO THROW HAIL MARY PASSES? The press releases being sent out by statewide candidates, particularly on the Democratic side, are becoming more, mmmm, flailing as days count down.
One from Wednesday, with follow-ups on Thursday, came from Mark Herring’s campaign to win his 42nd term as Virginia’s attorney general. (Well, it’d be only his third term, but to some of us it feels like his 42nd.)
Team Herring was outraged – outraged, I tell you! – the his Republican opponent Jason Miyares has accepted funding from a group that was, in Herring’s eyes, financially supportive of the Jan. 6 “insurrection” (his word, not necessarily mind) at the U.S. Capitol.
Are we talkin’ Proud Boys here? Some other similar far-right group? Nope: Herring was complaining about the National Association of Republican Attorneys General, which handed Miyares $500,000 in campaign cash and somehow, in the eyes of Democrats, could be connected to the brouhaha at the Capitol.
Mmmmm, swing and a miss on that one, Team Herring. And if that’s what you’ll be throwing at the political wall to see what sticks in the coming weeks, you must be seeing polling that has you in deep doo-doo. Because that line of attack against Miyares – who quite justifiably can be attacked on any number of actual policy positions – just looks silly. And desperate.
– Scott McCaffrey