Two months ago, after the Houston Chronicle announced its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President of the United States, the director of the editorial page of the Arizona Republic, Phil Boas, contacted a prominent state historian. He wanted help determining whether his paper had ever endorsed a Democratic Presidential candidate in its hundred-and-twenty-six-year history. The Phoenix-based, conservative-leaning newspaper, which has the largest circulation in the state, was once called the Arizona Republican, and it had backed every Republican candidate for President going back as far as anyone at the paper could remember. But what about, say, the contest between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, in 1892, two years after the paper’s founding? [...]
The Republic’s editorial board eventually spent “dozens of hours” discussing the “twists and turns of the election” in secretive meetings that Boas compared to a “papal conclave.” Some discussions involved the entire board, while others were between just Boas and the publisher, Mi-Ai Parrish. Those two, along with the paper’s editor-in-chief, Nicole Carroll, form the “executive wing” of the board. (Parrish green-lighted every editorial that criticized Trump.) The ultimate decision to support Clinton was not unanimous, but Boas said that reaching a majority was not difficult and effectively happened months ago. “There’s often tension between the main board and the executive wing,” he explained. “And there wasn’t that tension. It was an easy thing to do.” He continued, “We see him as a dangerous guy who would roll back press freedoms, who has sworn to do that. If he would crush freedoms in one area, we have no doubt he’d do so in others.” [...]
Boas believes that many longtime Republicans who support Trump are in denial. “I hear it in their voices, the little qualifiers: ‘He’s not nearly as bad as she is.’ That kind of thing,” he said. “I know they know that he violates even their values. But they’re willing to make compromises because they so despise her.” The Republic, he added, was “not willing to make that compromise.” Clinton “treats the office with respect,” he said. “And Trump has no respect for the office that he seeks. And if the leaders of our country don’t respect our important institutions, no one is going to respect them. That’s why he scares us.”
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