Posts published in “Day: May 18, 2006”

Four years have passed since Tom Luna became the only statewide Republican candidate in Idaho to lose in November. His chances for the same office, superintendent of public instruction, look good this time: He has the odds to win the Republican nomination (he was unopposed for it last time), and probably throws the Democratic nominee into presumptive underdog status. All this owes something to early planning, good organization and solid campaign skills, which were not bad in 2002. It seems to owe little to the four years in between, during most of which Luna was a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Education.

That piece of his track record isn't ignored, exactly. It's appropriately referenced on his resume, and mentioned in passing. But it's hardly the focus and highlight you might expect. In running for the top education job in Idaho, his years on the Nampa School Board really aren't an especially great recommendation, or his work on some state advisory committees.

Luna was a Bush Administration official from early in 2003 into 2005, and one online resume lists him as senior advisor to Secretary of Education Rod Paige, director of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities (2003-04) but primarily, apparently, he was executive director of the U.S. Rural Education Task Force. One might expect Luna to speak at length about these experiences; instead, they tend to get perfunctory mentions. Why?

Could it be because there's not much to tell? Or because the telling might make for some uncomfortable juxtapositions? (more…)

No, not this one - we haven't and won't, in any political race. (At least that's our past and current policy; like all things blog, it could change in future.) But what does it mean to say that a blog has endorsed a candidate?

The question is a little trickier than it might appear at first.

Some blogs, like this one, are relatively controlled-access and have some control of viewpoint. You can comment about our posts, and we encourage that, but anyone who says this space has endorsed someone or something because a commenter has, is simply wrong. On the other hand are blogs like Blue Oregon or Red State Northwest which are joint efforts by a number of bloggers; if one of those bloggers urges the election of a specific candidate - as occasionally happens - you still can't easily say that the blog has done that.

And there's a secondary question: What does it mean to endorse? Is writing favorably about the idea of someone's election enough? Newspaper endorsements are typically clear-cut; they say that "we endorse X for election," or something clearly similar. On the web, the situation is a little less certain.

All that preface to a response by the campaign of Keith Johnson, a candidate for the U.S. House in Idaho's 1st district, to a question posed here about one of its messages. The message said that "2 out of 3 left wing, Idaho bloggers endorsed Robert Vasquez in the Republican primary for Congress. Because he would ensure the Democrats a win in November. The third endorsed Sheila Sorensen. Enough said.”

So, we asked, who were the bloggers? The campaign responded today, and here are the links: (more…)