L.A. Times Editorial Chief Quits After Owner Blocks Harris Endorsement

L.A. Times Editorial Chief Quits After Owner Blocks Harris Endorsement

Mariel Garza said the editorial board was prepared to endorse Kamala Harris, but the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential race.

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By Katie Robertson

The head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board resigned on Wednesday after the paper’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.

In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Mariel Garza, who held the title editorials editor, said she had quit because “I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Ms. Garza said that the editorial board had planned to endorse Ms. Harris, but that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, decided this month that the newspaper would not make any endorsement for president. The paper did not explain to readers why it was not issuing an endorsement.

Ms. Garza submitted her resignation letter to the paper’s executive editor, Terry Tang, who oversees both the newsroom and the opinion department. Ms. Tang came to the paper after previously serving as an editor at The New York Times for 20 years.

Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought The Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, pushed back on Ms. Garza’s version of events. In a social media post on Wednesday, he said that the editorial board had not followed through on a directive to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”

“With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he said. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Ms. Garza responded to Dr. Soon-Shiong in a text to The New York Times, saying: “What he outlines in that tweet is not an endorsement, or even an editorial.”

The Los Angeles Times’s union leadership said in a statement Wednesday night that they were “deeply concerned” about Dr. Soon-Shiong’s decision on the endorsement.

“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said.

The Los Angeles Times has endorsed a Democrat for president in every election cycle since 2008. This year the newspaper has made a series of endorsements in state, city and county races.

Semafor first reported that The Los Angeles Times was skipping this year’s presidential endorsement.

Ms. Garza, who joined the paper’s editorial board in 2015, was appointed editorials editor in April.

In her resignation letter, which Columbia Journalism Review published in full, Ms. Garza said it mattered that the largest newspaper in California declined to endorse “in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.”

“It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” she wrote. “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country, and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger — who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?”