Politicians Debate Endorsement Value of Post vs. Apple Ballot

The Washington area’s paper of record has launched an all-out holy war against the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA), the county’s most powerful labor union. From a political perspective, this is important because both of their endorsements are considered among the most desirable in the county. If the Post is determined to annihilate MCEA, their endorsements may be headed in different directions. And so we asked a group of elected officials this question:

If you had a choice between getting endorsed by the Post OR getting on the Apple Ballot, but not both, which of the two would you pick and why?

Here is what they said.

Elected Official:

Apple for two reasons:

1. I’ve been elected before with endorsement from the teachers and not the Post.

2. People coming to the polls usually only take the Apple Ballot in with them when they go in to vote - they count on it.

Elected Official:

WashPost. Here’s why:

* I believe the Apple is respected by voters and especially teachers. However, I believe the WashPost is even more well known and even more widely respected. Walk up to an average person on the street, ask them what the Apple Ballot and the Washington Post is. They will likely know the latter but not the former. The Washington Post is a revered and historic institution (see: Woodward/Bernstein).

* The Apple Ballot has a good record of winning in 2006 MoCo races. However, they often endorse candidates who are more likely to win anyway. So their record has to be taken with a grain of salt. The MCEA will endorse people based on politics of who they owe favors and whom they need to work with after the election. I believe the WashPost is more principled since they don’t need to worry about contracts or worry about retribution from politicians who were jilted.

* Last time after I was endorsed by the MCEA, I was asked to pay $6,000. Would be great to save that money.

* There is a possibility that the War that the WashPost is waging on MCEA will reduce the effectiveness of the Apple Ballot. But the MCEA is unable to diminish the Post’s effectiveness. I think it might be difficult for the MCEA to solicit its endorsed candidates for $$$ since the WashPost has raised such a stink about it.... So if they have less money to publicize the Apple, they will be less effective.

Elected Official:

I would prefer the Apple Ballot - more people are influenced by it.

Elected Official:

If the election were held today… Apple Ballot by a nose. In a local race where schools and education rate near the top of what voters deem most important, the teachers’ endorsement is instant credibility. For someone running at the federal level, the Post probably noses out Apple Ballot in terms of influence over voters.

Elected Official:

The Post because with my record on education there is no way I could lose the real support of teachers who vote in my district. Besides, an editorial opinion by the newspaper of record is like pure gold.

Elected Official:

Tough call. When push comes to shove, I’d take the Post endorsement if I had the ground forces to pass out reprints of it. If not, I’d take the teachers because those guys have serious coverage on the ground.

Elected Official:

Toss up. The Post endorsement would normally trump in my opinion but because the paper waits until the Sunday before election day to typically make its selections, it’s not as useful to candidates as it otherwise would be if they endorsed a few weeks earlier. We have to run through hoops in 24 hours to try to print materials that say “Endorsed by the Washington Post” and it is costly. The Apple Ballot endorsements are done early enough in the year to include their logo on our yard signs and other materials. Not to mention how helpful it is to have MCEA/teacher volunteers passing the ballot out at each polling place.

As far as the voter is concerned, I think they appreciate the viewpoint of both sources. Perhaps for BOE and County Council candidates, who have more control and impact on the education process in the county, the Apple Ballot carries extra weight. With state legislators, we handle so many more issues than education, that the WaPo endorsement is more a statement of the entire candidacy and on a range of issues.

Elected Official:

I believe that the credibility of the Post is weak. Older people seem to take the Post seriously, but the younger voters and more diverse communities do not. Social networking tools, blogs and radio play a stronger role. Teachers are very well regarded, and the school system has worked hard in creating a collaborative environment based on student achievement outcomes.

Elected Official:

The Post. At the end of the day, the Apple Ballot is a tool of a special interest group, albeit one I support. The reality is that they are only concerned about their teachers. Meanwhile the Post, I hope, would base their endorsement on a variety of factors.

Elected Official:

Apple Ballot, every time.

Dem voters use the Apple Ballot to cut through the clutter and confusion of down-ballot candidates and issues. They don’t know who we are, but they know they like teachers and education. If we’re good enough for the teachers, we’re good enough for them.

Elected Official:

Apple Ballot, hands down. The Post is well and good, but the Post is not going to be doing mailings, buying TV time, and deploying an army of teachers on a day off from school standing at the polls handing out literature with my name on it.

Elected Official:

Apple.

In our system where state and county officials are on a crowded gubernatorial ballot every four years in a closed primary with low turnout and low name recognition of candidates, and no threat of a challenge in the general election, the Apple Ballot carries much more weight than the Post.

Elected Official:

Easy. Apple Ballot. Has nothing to do with clout. Everything to do with my values. I don’t give a ______ about what a newspaper thinks.

Elected Official:

Apple Ballot. People are still more likely to grab an Apple Ballot when they walk into a polling station on Election Day and early voting days. There may be less luster with the Apple Ballot due to recent Post editorials, but there are less and less Post readers these days so negative media will not have much impact on views towards the Apple Ballot. Perhaps if the negative media occurred a few years ago, then it might have had a greater impact on the Apple Ballot. I think less people care who the Post endorses with each passing election. It is still a worthy endorsement - to get the Post endorsement - but I think its impact is diminishing and will continue to do so.

Elected Official:

The Post presumably looks at a Council Member’s total record; MCEA has a narrower focus. Therefore, a Post endorsement is more substantial. As to which has more impact, that is a close call, and may be different for each individual District Council Member, depending on their district, than At-Large Members.

Elected Official:

If the unions behave “badly,” make a fight out of pay issues which will likely be off the table because of how bad things are, then they are going to offend many voters. More so, because in the primary these are the voters who pay most attention. I have yet to talk to anyone who says raise taxes, protect union raises, I’m happy to pay for it. Unions could poison the water by pushing too hard and tarnish the value of their endorsements. On the other hand, if they’re proactively part of the solution, they could get big credit for helping the county get over the hump. Or they could hand the Post an issue that they’ll beat elected officials to death with.

The Apple is worth more than any other union endorsement, but not if we get in a major fight over the budget. If that’s avoided, and the Post is deprived of this issue, then Apple trumps Post. I think the Post editorials have been damaging, judging by the comments I’m seeing, but it’s February and will be hard to keep alive. But a budget fight changes everything. Look at it this way, the data shows income loss in virtually every income bracket. COLAs and steps against a background of declining incomes for very many county residents will be a story that keeps on giving for the Post. The truth is that the Post and the Unions have largely endorsed the same candidates, so a scenario that was either/or would not be a good scenario.

Elected Official:

If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said the Post. Interestingly, given the number of negative editorials the Post has written about the Council and various issues over those past two years, I would have anticipated that there would have been a real increase in negative reaction associated with those articles because that tended to be the case previously when the Post wrote similar pieces. I have been surprised that there has been very little response on the part of County residents which would lead me to believe that either people aren’t reading the editorials, or don’t care what is being written. Either way it shows a pretty significant decline in influence. I am not sure that I consider the Apple Ballot the holy grail, but if you have a crowded field in an at-large race or even a district primary I think it would be much more helpful to have the Apple Ballot, because at the end of the day it is also feet on the ground at polling places and is a good brand being handed out to voters by teachers which also puts a good face on the candidate they endorse.

Elected Official:

The Post, although both endorsements in general matter less than they used to. The Post has fewer readers, so the time that candidates have time to publicize the endorsement, along with the number of voters who vote early (possibly before the Post endorses), makes a potentially big difference, and the general reputation of pubic employee unions has declined.

This year I think the Post will matter more than the Apple Ballot, because I don’t think it will be much if any advantage to candidates this year to have union endorsements because of the unwillingness of union leaders to fully and publicly recognize the severity of the budget problem and agree that ANY pay raises are out of the question. In fact, furloughs are all but certain. The more that unions argue or hold out for any pay raises, the more they hurt themselves with the general public. If union leadership continues to hold out, it could be that union endorsements will hurt a candidate this year, even in a Democratic primary. Since teachers are not generally viewed by the public as a typical union, and since the teachers union is the largest, the teachers endorsement will continue to be the most important union endorsement. In addition, if the Post runs numerous editorials, as they have, that describe union influence as outsized and connect it to unaffordable pay increases and tax increases, that increases the influence of the Post's endorsements.

One other difference: as a humorist once noted, not many organizations buy ink by the barrel, as does the Post.

Elected Official:

I’d pick the Post as long as they did it far enough in advance to get the word out. Sometimes, they endorse so close to Election Day that it doesn’t matter much.

Elected Official:

The Apple Ballot, of course. The Post did not endorse me in my last election; MCEA’s Apple has endorsed me every time - and I got ELECTED!! Enough said.

Elected Official:

Off the record, MCEA has data showing a stronger response to the Apple Ballot endorsement than to the Post endorsement. Off the record as well, at this point as a voter I wouldn’t trust either one. The Post doesn’t know what it is doing most of the time in local elections and can be easily bamboozled by a few well-placed phone calls from certain people. In large election years, it endorses people for local office that the editors have never even met. If your name is on the Apple Ballot, the voter just has to guess about why exactly you are there - it may be mostly because of your positions, it may be mostly because of your race or gender or sexual preference (being the right identity at the right time), it may be because the union leadership wants to send someone a message. One thing is for sure - it is not primarily about the candidate’s commitment to what the kids need, unless you believe that what is good for MCEA is good for the kids’ education (just like what is good for GM is good for America). Of course, the union leadership really believes with unquestioning faith that this statement is true.

Elected Official:

Easy: I would pick the Apple because it is closer to my values (support for teachers, support for working people, belief in education) than the Post (arrogant union-busters). Even if I lose the election, I would rather stand with teachers than with the cynical elitists who comprise the Post’s editorial board.

However, the real question is: who would you rather punch in the nose: Lee Hockstader or Jon Gerson? The answer to that one is not so easy. Both are little tyrants who believe they are entitled to exert disproportionate control over county politics.

###

The above sample constitutes about half of all MoCo elected officials at the county and state levels. While most of them respect both endorsements, twelve expressed a preference for the Apple Ballot, six expressed a preference for the Post and four did not have a clear choice. Let’s bear in mind that these opinions were given in the immediate aftermath of three Post attacks on MCEA in three weeks. We will bring some data to this debate tomorrow.