After 5-Term Dem, Paper Couldn't Wait To Endorse Pro-Trump Ex-Cop
Even as the credibility and reputations of national mainstream media outlets continue to crumble, the political endorsements of the editorial boards of local newspapers still carries some heft among the general public.
Thus, it is a pretty big deal that a major newspaper in Minnesota has endorsed a Republican congressional candidate — St. Louis County Commissioner Pete Stauber — to represent the state’s 8th District over his Democrat challenger, who’d previously worked as a campaign manager for the district’s retiring Democrat representative, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
That paper is the Duluth News Tribune, and they had enthusiastically endorsed outgoing Democrat Rep. Rick Nolan when he ran for re-election in 2016. However, the paper has withheld their support for the Democrat aiming to take his place, Nolan’s 2016 campaign manager and former state representative Joe Radinovich.
Instead, the Duluth News Tribune wrote that “Pete Stauber’s impressive lifetime of public service” and “his unwavering devotion and commitment” to the people of Northeastern Minnesota made him the right choice for voters of the 8th District.
The paper seemed particularly impressed with Stauber’s 23 years of service as a police officer in Duluth, not to mention his eight years as a city council member for the town of Hermantown, as well as his current service on the St. Louis County Board.
The editorial board was also impressed Stauber had previously been a union organizer and union president, as well as by the fact that he and his brother had started their own successful small business.
“In a heated election with strong, worthy candidates — don’t buy the attack ads, smear campaigns, and other ugliness from special interests and party loyalists from both sides this fall — Stauber has emerged as the leader to stand up for and to fight for our corner of the state in Washington, D.C. On Election Day Nov. 6, eligible voters across the 8th District can pick Stauber as our next representative in Congress,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.
The likely liberal editorial board seemed especially pleased by statements from Stauber which indicated that he’d represent the state in a bipartisan and independent fashion. Stauber has said that he intends to support President Donald Trump’s agenda when it was in line with the needs of Minnesotans, and oppose it when it was not.
Stauber is incredibly supportive of the state’s many small businesses and lifeblood industry of mining, though he also has an eye on ensuring that environmental concerns are properly addressed as well, as he takes protecting the Great Lakes and other waterways of the region quite seriously.
The editorial board wrote, “Stauber is committed to ensuring clean water and environmental protection while also supporting copper-nickel mining and the jobs and economic boon it promises for Northeastern Minnesota.”
The paper concluded of Stauber, “All voters in the 8th District can embrace Stauber’s commitment to them, no matter their politics, confident he has made good on similar pledges made during a lifetime of devoted public service.”
It is worth noting that, though the paper declined to endorse Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee Radinovich, they didn’t have anything negative to say about him, and indeed referred to him as a “worthy candidate.”
What the Duluth paper declined to mention in their endorsement of Stauber was Radinovich’s involvement — marginal though it may be — in a #MeToo sexual harassment controversy that enveloped Rep. Nolan’s office during the time Radinovich was managing Nolan’s re-election campaign.
A lengthy piece from the Minnesota Post in July had laid bare the details of a senior staffer in Nolan’s Washington D.C. office named Jim Swiderski who had been accused by multiple young female interns and staffers of inappropriately groping them and making sexually harassing remarks for years.
The accusations came to the attention of Nolan and his top staffers in 2015, but rather than discipline or fire Swiderski, he was quietly allowed to retire. However, he was later rehired — by campaign manager Radinovich, only to be fired again a short time later — and given a remote job from home with the campaign, a move that outraged the young female staffers that Swiderski had allegedly victimized for years.
To be sure, Radinovich had little if anything to do with the habitual sexual harassment alleged to have been perpetrated by Swiderski — indeed, the Post indicated that Radinovich had urged Nolan to cut Swiderski loose once again after learning what had occurred previously. (He declined to comment for the Post’s article.) — but the attachment to a retiring Democrat with sexual harassment baggage may have proven one hurdle too many against the clean and inspiring background of Stauber, who ultimately received the liberal paper’s endorsement.
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