It's something I thought I'd never see within my lifetime. The election of an African-American President. I only wish that my own parents and my grandmother had lived to see it too.
And I'm sad that Barack Obama's grandmother couldn't hang on to witness it.
If you bothered to glance at the newspress.com website late last night, you'd never know what an historic evening it had been.
I have no doubt that Wendy McCaw wanted to see Hannah-Beth Jackson lose her bid for the State Senate and wanted the News-Press to be able to take a big portion of the credit for Jackson's defeat. But despite endorsing Jackson's opponent Tony Strickland and those relentless editorials and op-ed page columns that appeared in the News-Press vilifying "Taxin' Jackson," Jackson won her race against Strickland
In fact, the voters in Santa Barbara appear to have paid absolutely no attention to the News-Press' endorsements in this election. Besides devoting countless column-inches to attacking Jackson the News-Press also strongly opposed local Measures A and G. Both won the approval of the voters.
The only two candidates endorsed by the News-Press who can claim victory this morning are Lauren Hanson and Bill Rosen who were elected to the Goleta Water Board.
The News-Press' support of Hanson and Rosen was relatively low key in comparison to the constant flogging of Jackson and the diatribes it published opposing Measures A and G.
In other words, the more News-Press cried "wolf" the less readers paid attention.
There's a lesson to be learned there, but I doubt that Wendy will be smart enough to figure it out.
And one other thing, with the exception of Strickland and the water board duo, none of the candidates (as opposed to the ballot measures) the paper chose to endorse, had a chance. Matt Kokkonen, and to a lesser degree McCain, were bound to lose. Not that endorsing is about jumping on the bandwagon and backing winners, but with Kokkonen, they never even devoted a full editorial to him to explain why they thought he was a better choice than long-time incumbent Lois Capps. And of course the McCain endorsement came at the 11th hour, which was long after voters had made up their minds.
But, at the News-Press these days its always more about being against somebody as opposed to being for somebody.
