Arizona Republic Left Leaning? ☀
Tonight, listening to a local radio talk show, I heard the host repeat an inane remark that’s echoed by many other Arizona conservatives — that the state’s newspaper of record, the Arizona Republic is “left leaning”.
A simply baffling, incredulous charge, considering that as far as I know, the Arizona Republic has NEVER endorsed a Democrat for president. I can’t confirm every single election, but I did look up their endorsements for every election dating back to 1980 — and in each instance, the paper previously known as the Arizona Republican endorsed the Republican presidential candidate. In recent years, since the 2000 sale to the anti-union Gannett operation (also the publisher of USA Today), they have endorsed some local Democratic candidates (like Janet Napolitano and Harry Mitchell) but continue to support Senator Kyl and Senator McCain. Prior to 2000, the paper was owned by the arch-conservative Pulliam (progeny including former vice-president Dan Quayle) family:
Yet another powerful force behind conservatism’s rise was Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. Pulliam was a publisher in the tradition of front-page editorials, including a remarkable one in the mid-1960s discussing how bureaucracy was destroying representative government. He was hated and feared, but unquestionably influential. Again, however, he was deeply loyal to Arizona and Phoenix, supportive of civic projects, the CAP and every federal dollar that flowed into the state. In his prime, he was not frozen in time or resistent to facts. (When I was a columnist at the Republic after it had been bought by Gannett, old-timers would sometimes ask me, “What would old man Pulliam make of you?” My reply: “He’d be egging me on.” They didn’t disagree.)
Perhaps, to a hard core conservative, even the term “Republican” may denote left-leaning.
