The nine Republicans who have officially jumped into the presidential race have their pockets of fans across the country, but one place where almost none of them are getting any support is right in their own backyards: the editorial boards of their respective states’ biggest newspapers.
Journalists are known to lean left when it comes to politics, so the cool reception Republicans receive from local editorial boards isn’t especially surprising. Still, a newspaper’s position for or against a politician can have influence on likely voters, and editorials are frequently cited in campaigns as voices of authority.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is currently polling nationally at the top of the field of declared presidential candidates, has been the target of several negative editorials by the Tampa Bay Times since he was elected to the Senate in 2010.
“Rubio is all about what’s best for Rubio, not what’s best for Florida,” said one Tampa Bay Times editorial last year related to Rubio’s opposition to Obamacare and timid support for immigration reform.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has received even harsher treatment from the Louisville Courier-Journal, his home state’s biggest newspaper. After Paul announced he was running for president in April, the Courier-Journal said he was “was not quite ready for prime time,” citing a series of testy interview exchanges Paul had in the following days.
In March, 47 Republican senators, including Paul, signed a letter to Iran’s leaders. It cautioned Iran that any deal President Obama makes with the country to curb its nuclear development program could be undone by a new administration.
“If Mr. Paul’s signature represents his grasp of foreign policy, Republicans would be justifiably leery about him as a presidential nominee,” the Courier-Journal said at the time.
The Houston Chronicle, Texas’s most widely read newspaper, endorsed Ted Cruz in his bid for the Senate in 2012, only to reverse that decision nearly one year later.
“When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation — that he follow [former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey] Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator,” the Chronicle said. “Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution.”
After Cruz announced his presidential campaign in March, the Chronicle accused him of having “disdain” for Texans, citing his tendency to disrupt normal order in the Senate and aversion to cooperation with Republicans and Democrats.
Neither former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nor former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom have run for president before, received the support of their states’ largest newspapers.
“This is no more Mike Huckabee’s time to run for president of the United States than it is [former GOP presidential nominee] Mitt Romney’s,” said the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after Huckabee declared his latest bid for the White House. “The country’s been there, tried that. To no great purpose.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board has yet to weigh in on Santorum, who announced his candidacy last week. But a 2012 editorial when he was chasing Romney for the party’s nomination called him “a dangerous rightwing conservative who is outside the American political mainstream.”
Two outliers in the field are South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, who announced he’s running for president on Monday, and former New York Gov. George Pataki, who declared himself last week.
When Graham sought reelection in 2014, The State, South Carolina’s state-wide newspaper, praised him as “among the dwindling handful of federal politicians who understand that we must preserve the sensible center.”
At the end of Pataki’s third term in 2006, the New York Times, generally a tough critic of conservatives, summed up his tenure as “always adequate.”
Neither retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a Maryland native, nor former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who resides in Virginia, have been featured in their respective state newspaper editorials as of yet.
