***image1*** Candidates touted their backers up to the end.
Election day brought poll workers, sign wavers and the last spate of newspaper ads in which candidates touted their endorsements.
District 2 City Council candidate Marilyn Bane? Endorsed by all three newspapers.
District 3 contender Louis Montaño? He got the seal of approval from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and City Councilors Miguel Chavez and Matt Ortiz.
Mayoral candidate Karen Walker? There's former mayor Sam Pick on her right, community activist Mary Lou Cook on her left.
The impact of these endorsements remains to be seen (SFR's press deadline is before polls close.
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). But the increasing number of endorsements does spark the question of how do newspapers and civic organizations make their endorsement decisions?
The answer varies from paper to paper and group to group.
In the case of newspapers, the Santa Fe New Mexican, Journal Santa Fe/Journal North and SFR all do it differently.
SFR has each candidate from every race in the paper's office for an in-person interview alongside his/her opponents. Endorsements are hashed out collaboratively by the editor and staff writers and written by the editor.
The Journal Santa Fe/Journal North interviewed some candidates but not others, according to editor Mark Oswald.
"If we think we know enough about a candidate, then we didn't interview them," Oswald says. "It's not any kind of consistent thing."
Oswald, who along with opinion editor Karen Peterson decides the endorsements, would not say which candidates were not interviewed.
The New Mexican decides on its choices based on discussions between long-time editorial page editor Bill Waters and publisher Robin Martin, Waters says. The paper asks some candidates to come in for interviews but not all of them.
According to Waters, candidates Carmichael Dominguez, Eric Lujan, Carol Robertson Lopez and Donado Coviello were not brought into the New Mexican for interviews this election cycle.
"That's because we already had the information we wanted from those candidates for the purpose of endorsements," Waters says.
The paper chose not to interview write-in City Council candidate Sandra Aguilar because she wasn't on the ballot, Waters says.
According to Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute (a resource center and school for journalists), the varied methods by which Santa Fe's papers come to endorsements is not unusual.
Across the country, newspaper endorsements are birthed from a variety of sources. At some papers, they emerge from an editorial board. Other times, the publisher hands down the decision. Sometimes written lists of questions are given to candidates. At other papers, candidates submit to interviews with members of the editorial staff.
"There are no rules, and that is part of the problem," McBride says. "We're a profession that bases itself on loose standards, and when it comes to endorsing candidates, you're moving into an area with even less conformity. It's all very much at the publisher's or owner's prerogative."
McBride did say it's becoming more common for papers to explain their own endorsement machinations in an editor's note so as to create "transparency."
Aside from newspapers, it's common for well-known individuals to endorse candidates as well. Former interior secretary Stewart Udall endorsed Anna Hansen for City Council and Santa Fe Public School Board member Frank Montaño backed fellow board member Carmichael Dominguez.
Then there's local organizations. If newspapers have loose rules for endorsements, then the standards for businesses' and organizations' choices are elastic.
Ten Thousand Waves endorsed David Coss for mayor and Chris Calvert and Carol Robertson Lopez for City Council in Districts 1 and 4, respectively (no, the spa didn't make its decision based on which candidates spent the most time splashing around in the hot tubs).
According to Duke Klauck, the spa's owner, no interviews, discussions or structured approach was adopted for the endorsements. Klauck simply chose the candidates he thought were the strongest and best represented his business' interest.
"We're pretty active in local politics, and I like to put my money behind candidates I think will be good for Santa Fe," Klauck says.
Mitch Buszek, director of GreenPAC, a local political action committee, says his group's endorsement of Coss, Calvert and District 2 candidate Rebecca Wurzburger was based on feedback from community activists and questionnaires with most of the candidates.
While the group interviewed both Coss and Walker, it didn't speak with Coviello or David Schutz because "we didn't feel they had the experienced track record in terms of our values," Buszek says.
According to Buszek, GreenPAC chose not to make an endorsement in District 3 because no clear majority of members expressed interest in a particular candidate and, "We didn't see District 4 as a seriously contested election," either, Buszek says of the group's non-endorsement in that race. "We thought Carol was strong and would carry it."
Len Montoya, president of AFSCME Local 3999, which represents city workers, says his union decided to endorse Coss following a September mayoral forum between Coss and Walker (at the time the only two candidates in the race).
"As a group, we evaluated both of them right after the forum and made our choice," Montoya says.
Local 3999 again used the forum as a measuring stick in their choices for City Council as well, picking Robertson Lopez, Louis Montaño and Wurzburger after a February forum. The union's membership split on Eric Lujan and Chris Calvert in District 1.
Now that the whole thing's finally done, every paper, person or group who made an endorsement is going be watching carefully to see if their guy or gal lives up to the hype.
If not, four years is right around the corner.
