On Monday, the New York Times editorial board announced that it will no longer endorse candidates for mayor of New York City and governor of New York State. The abrupt change ends a tradition that has played a crucial role in local politics since 1897. One need not agree with the editorial board’s past endorsements or left-leaning disposition to lament its decision.
Interest in local journalism and editorials has waned in the United States for decades, as American voters have increasingly focused on national issues and the goings-on in Washington. The Times’s pullback marks a continuation of this trend of deprioritizing local matters in favor of highly charged national and international issues. The editorial board hasn’t endorsed candidates for New York City Council since the 2017 local elections. The Metro desk has likewise shrunk over time, with fewer stories covering the city that bears the paper’s name. The democratic process suffers with fewer voices to hold those in power to account.
But the issues that most affect residents, from housing, education, and public safety to mass transit, parks, and more, fall under the purview of local government. Many of these matters are political, in the sense that residents differ in their preferences—bike or car lanes, more or less housing, faster transit or lower fares—but not in a consistently partisan way. New York City voters, overwhelmingly Democratic, differ on these issues.
Local elections, therefore, require more information than a party label can provide. Given New York’s closed primaries and party enrollment statistics, where the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor or governor today goes on to clinch an easy general election victory, endorsements help distinguish candidates. Though civic-minded voters will acquaint themselves with the candidates and their policy positions, many less-informed citizens won’t bother. Endorsements from civil-society institutions like the Times thus provide a critical source of easily digestible information for the public. In particular, Manhattan liberals—the Times’s core local readership—trust the editorial board’s left-of-center political stance, often relying on its pick to guide their decisions at the ballot box.
An endorsement by the Times’s editorial board could upend a state or local election. In the 35 general mayoral elections since 1897, the Times’s candidate won 19 times. But even if the Grey Lady’s blessing didn’t propel a candidate to victory, it changed campaigns. The paper’s 2021 Democratic primary endorsement of former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia vaulted her to prominence; she narrowly lost to frontrunner Eric Adams.
The editorial board’s decision is, therefore, as much a matter of local power allocation as it is information. As many commentators have noted, the vacuum its disappearance leaves behind will empower the city’s myriad interest groups, especially the large labor unions that seek to be primary-season kingmakers. Whatever the editorial board lacked in pragmatism or prudence over the years—it endorsed David Dinkins over Rudy Giuliani in 1993 and Mark Green over Michael Bloomberg in 2001—it didn’t have a direct pecuniary interest in the election outcome.
Not so for many of the groups that will now vie for their piece of the Times’s abandoned influence. The city’s teachers’ union, for example, has waged battle against charter schools and the mayor’s control over public schools. The union endorsed former comptroller (and current primary candidate) Scott Stringer in 2021, who vowed to eliminate the exam for the city’s high-performing specialized high schools and doubted the value of charter schools. By contrast, the Times’s endorsement of Garcia lauded her operational achievements in city government.
With the Times stepping back, groups like the teachers’ union may ask for concessions that prioritize their members’ interests over those of residents and taxpayers. Some voters, lacking their go-to cue from the source they most trust, will decide to stay home on Election Day. Lowering New York’s already pitiful turnout in local elections will make it easier for the union and other interest groups to sway outcomes by mobilizing their members and supporters. One can disagree with the Times’s relentless progressivism, while still conceding that its priorities are more broadminded than these entrenched political players.
Other beneficiaries of the Times’s abdication will include local editorial outlets that continue to offer endorsements, such as the New York Post and New York Daily News. Unlike much of its competition, the Post has managed to maintain robust coverage of city and state issues without resorting to paywalls. Social media, too, will likely play a larger role in future city and state races.
The end of such an influential voice on the left in local elections has ramifications that go beyond politics. New Yorkers, including the Times’s critics, are losing another institution of city life. As with most other losses, they may not appreciate what they had until it’s gone.
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