Just so it’s clear: The Bay Guardian doesn’t send out slate cards. We don’t do door hangers. We don’t produce campaign mail. Ever. Period.
But just about every election, somebody we endorsed, or some group that agrees with us, reprints the Guardian endorsements, makes fliers out of them and sends or hands them around. That’s fine with me — we’re happy to get the word out. And even if it weren’t fine with me, there’s not a whole lot I could do about it — our endorsements are public, and there’s nothing wrong with senidng around fliers saying the Guardian endorsed these candidates.
And in the 25 years I’ve been working here, I’ve never seen anyone try to do something sleazy like use the Guardian logo to promote a candidate we didn’t actually endorse. Until now.
I’ve just learned that there’s a slate card going around with our logo on it and an endorsement of Carole Migden for state Senate. That’s wrong. We didn’t endorse Migden. We went with Mark Leno. A lot of my progressive friends disagreed with that decision, and I respect their opinions. This was a tough one, and there are good people on both sides. And until today, I was pretty impressed with how both Migden and Leno had been trying to keep the focus on their own strengths, and instead of attacking each other have pointed out that the real danger here is the possibility that Joe Nation will wind up winning.
And then this.
I’ve gotten calls all afternoon about it. Voters are confused; they have a mailer saying we’ve endorsed Leno, and one that appears to say we’ve endorsed Migden. The language on the Migden card is written carefully, and if you read all the fine print, you can figure out that it never actually says the Guardian is backing Migden. But very few people read or get the fine points; they see a slate card with a Guardian logo and a picture of Migden, and they think we endorsed her.
That’s not right. Whatever you think of our endorsements, this is misleading. It’s a trick on the voters, using our name, and I don’t appreciate it.
I called Sup. Chris Daly, who was behind the card, tonight and told him how unhappy I was, and he said he didn’t care. “I’m unhappy, too,” he said. “You endorsed Mark Leno, who is not a progressive.”
Okay, we can argue that forever, but it’s not the point. It’s not cool to use the Guardian logo and (I hope) good name and reputation to confuse the voters.
Again, for anyhone who missed the point: We endorsed Mark Leno for state Senate. One of the reasons we made that decision is that we found Migden’s ethical conduct, particularly when it came to campaign money, highly suspect. We don’t like political sleaze. And this is just the kind of shit we hate to see in the progressive movement.
Our endorsements are here. Use this slate; it’s the real one.