Endorsement: The Times rescinds its endorsement of Danielle Sandoval for L.A. City Council District 8 seat
The Times retracted its endorsement Tuesday of Deputy City Attorney Danielle Sandoval for the L.A. City Council seat she has held for five months. The Times initially endorsed Sandoval over five opponents in a June primary election for the post. But in a statement, Editor-in-Chief Arthur Delany announced:
We are withdrawing our endorsement of Deputy City Attorney Danielle Sandoval after an internal review of her campaign revealed an apparent discrepancy with our endorsement criteria. The Times’ endorsement criteria is based on fairness, impartiality, character, and public service.
We conducted a review of Ms. Sandoval’s campaign and concluded that her campaign may have violated Times policy by making unsubstantiated and potentially misleading assertions about her opponent, Darryl Viveros, which were widely reported in the media — including her own campaign literature, Facebook posts, interviews and news coverage.
Our review concluded that Ms. Sandoval provided the Times with a campaign finance filing that included claims about Mr. Viveros that were false and misleading.
We believe that Ms. Sandoval did not understand the endorsement criteria and chose to make misleading claims about Mr. Viveros without seeking our guidance and authorization, which would have required them to disclose the truth about both of them before the endorsement.
As a result, we were unable to recommend Ms. Sandoval as a candidate. We recognize that the Times’ endorsement is a public statement of our views about all people involved in our democracy and about the values of the Times as an independent news organization. While we do not expect that the decision to withdraw our endorsement will change the outcome of the Democratic primary, it is important for readers to understand that our endorsement had substantial importance to the campaign. Based on the evidence we received, we reached the conclusion that the integrity of our endorsement standards was in jeopardy, and so we took the action we did to protect it.
In recent weeks, several other Times editors and reporters have expressed concerns, similar to Delany’s, about Sandoval’s campaign. Delany
