On Friday, The Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis announced in an op-ed that the influential newspaper – the fourth-largest in the country – will not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

The Post refusing to back Vice President Kamala Harris marks the first time since 1988 that the paper has not supported the Democratic nominee for president.

In 1988, when the Post endorsed neither candidate, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis lost the election in a landslide, carrying only 10 states plus Washington D.C.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election,” Lewis wrote. He added that the paper will not make an endorsement “in any future presidential election.”

“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Lewis announced.

As he explained in the op-ed, the Post ended its previous policy of neutrality and began regularly endorsing Democrats for president in 1976, citing the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

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The bombshell news comes just 11 days before Election Day – and with early voting already open in a majority of states. However, it is only the latest in a growing pattern of many institutions and individuals who in the past have reliably supported Democrats – only to sit out the current race between Harris and her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

In fact, the hesitancy to back the party’s current standard-bearer may even extend all the way to rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers in the halls of Congress.

An executive decision

Over on the country’s opposite coast, the Los Angeles Times also recently decided not to endorse Harris in the presidential election.

This is the first time the left-leaning paper – the sixth largest in the nation by circulation – has refused to back a Democratic nominee in 20 years.

The Times’ owner, medical businessman Patrick Soon-Shiong, made the stunning decision for the paper to remain neutral during the waning days of the 2024 campaign.

In 2016, Soon-Shiong donated to the failed campaign of then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who lost in an upset to Trump. Yet the former Clinton donor’s executive decision in 2024 sent shockwaves among the publication’s staff, leading to the sudden resignation of the Times’ editorial chief this week.

Semafor reported that the Times’ “editorial board, which has endorsed Democratic candidates in every presidential race since it first endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, was preparing to do so once again this election” before the paper’s owner instead opted for neutrality.

On Wednesday, Times editor Mariel Garza declared in an interview with Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent.”

“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up,” she said. “This is how I’m standing up.”

In the interview, the former editor admitted that the Times is “a very liberal paper.”

The Post and Times are not alone

Also on Wednesday, FOX News noted in a separate report that across the country, endorsements from newspapers “for the Democratic presidential candidate have dipped by more than 60% this year since 2016 after VP Kamala Harris became the party’s frontrunner.”

Per the report, the number of papers that have endorsed Harris, with less than two weeks to go until election day, is less than a third of the number of papers that endorsed Clinton in 2016.

However, fewer newspapers in 2024 have also endorsed Trump compared to the previous two cycles. Instead, the number of papers that have chosen not to back either candidate, like the Times, has skyrocketed.

FOX indicated:

In 2016, more than 240 newspapers endorsed Hillary Clinton, while only 20 endorsed Trump. In 2020, 14 newspapers endorsed Trump, and 120 endorsed Biden.

This year, nearly 80 newspapers endorsed Harris, and fewer than 10 endorsed Trump.

Part of a greater trend?

The pattern of institutions that have usually supported the Democratic presidential nominee declining to back Harris seems to extend far greater than the press.

Like the mainstream news media, labor unions have long been a reliable source of support for Democratic candidates. Among the five largest unions in the United States is The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (“Teamsters”), with nearly a million and a half members.

However, as CatholicVote reported last month, the multi-industry union, which had thrown its support behind the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020,

announced that it will support neither major party candidate in November’s presidential election – marking the first time the union has not backed the Democratic nominee since 1996.

A FOX News columnist called the decision a “stunning move, and direct snub to Harris.” The sitting vice president had heavily courted the 121-year-old union’s support, but will be the first Democratic nominee this century to go without its backing.

The non-endorsement came after an internal poll taken in September showed Teamsters members supported Trump over Harris by a landslide margin of 27 points – 58% to 31%.

At the time, far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, expressed frustration at the union’s decision not to endorse her party’s nominee, blasting it as “confusing” and an “aberration.”

Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien pushed back against Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks during a September 19 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash: “Instead of trying to pick a fight with labor leaders who listen to their members and embrace their members’ opinions, she should maybe get into her district.”

O’Brien clarified that Teamsters members in the congresswoman’s home state of New York “voted overwhelmingly” to support Trump in the poll, adding “she may want to focus on her job instead of mine.”

Harris’ labor woes continue

Just two weeks after the Teamsters decided to pass on endorsing Harris for president, it was joined by another major union that has in the past several decades almost always backed the Democratic nominee for president.

On October 2, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) announced it would, like the Teamsters, endorse neither Harris nor Trump. The IAFF has nearly 350,000 members.

NBC News noted that the move was “a particular blow” to Harris, as the first responders union was in fact the first labor union to back now-President Joe Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 election cycle – long before he selected Harris as his running mate.

IAFF President Edward Kelly then stated: “This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to preserve and strengthen our unity.”

On October 3, a news release from the Trump campaign pointed out that on top of being early supporters of Biden’s 2020 bid, the IAFF “has endorsed a Democrat in every presidential election since at least 1976 — except 2016, when they also made no endorsement.”

The campaign added that unionized workers know that policies championed by much of the current Harris-led Democratic Party, such as a “fracking ban, electric vehicle mandate, and other left-wing lunacy,” would be “devastating.”

“Workers also know President Trump and Senator JD Vance, the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history, have always had the backs of American workers — and always will,” the release emphasized.

Hesitancy in the halls of Congress

Furthermore, recent reports show that the apparent trend of Harris receiving less support from people and organizations whose support for Democratic nominees in the past has been reliable may even extend to some members of Congress.

On August 14 – more than a week after Harris controversially became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee – POLITICO released a report titled “The Democrats who aren’t on Team Harris.”

“When President Joe Biden announced he wasn’t running for reelection, most Democrats quickly coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris,” wrote POLITICO’s Daniella Diaz and Anthony Adranga, “but a handful of Democratic candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, kept their powder dry.”

At the time, Diaz and Adranga identified six Democratic House nominees running in hotly contested House races – three of them incumbents – who declined to back their party’s nominee for president.

Now, over two months after the report’s release, at least one of these incumbent Democrats appears to have still not endorsed Harris.

Rep. Mary Peltola, D-AK, had previously written in a July Facebook post, “I’m not voting for Trump & I’m not endorsing anyone else either.”

“The media won’t allow us to engage in nuanced conversation because it doesn’t sell clicks,” she added in the post. “I won’t vote for a candidate who’s not pro-choice.”

“I can’t ask Alaskans to vote for a candidate who’s not pro-energy,” Peltola wrote, in a possible criticism of Harris’ history of animosity toward the oil industry, a large part of Alaska’s economy.

The Democratic congresswoman is currently fighting in a tight re-election campaign against Republican Nick Begich.

LifeNews Note: Anthony Iafrate writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.