How, and why, do we endorse California candidates? Ask the journalists who do it
A lot of news organizations, including all five of our McClatchy newsrooms in California, produce voter guides to help you suss out the candidates and understand your ballot. Where our guides are a little different is that we’re among news organizations that endorse candidates for statewide and local offices through our McClatchy California Editorial Board.
Why, and how, do we do this? Join me for a virtual discussion with three of our editorial board members — Marcos Bretón, Robin Epley and Cathie Anderson — at noon on Wednesday, May 20. We’ll delve into the board’s approach and, in some cases, the rationale behind their decisions.
The event is free. You can sign up here.
You can bone up in advance by viewing all the board’s endorsements in state and local races ... in one place ... here.
After you sign up, you’ll get a confirmation email from Bee audience engagement leader Samantha Sullivan that will include a Zoom webinar link. This email also will include a button to add the webinar to your digital calendar.
The day of the event, you’ll get an email reminder an hour beforehand. Click on the link to join us at noon sharp. Once the digital doors open, I’ll ask our panelists questions we often hear (Who is on the editorial board? Did you interview candidates in groups or one-by-one? How do deliberations work?)
You’ll be able to ask questions in the chat, with the panelists answering as many as possible. You also can send Samantha questions in advance as part of the registration process. We’ll try to keep the whole thing to a half-hour or so, and then post the video to our website. Think of it as a low-fi live podcast.
This is our third Zoom webinar, and the first with the editorial board, so consider yourself part of our grand news experiment.
While we’ve got you, a quick refresher on our voter guides. Each of our five guides starts broadly with the governor’s race, as well as other statewide and congressional races, before filtering down to local contests.
Here’s how to find each guide:
Sacramento: sacbee.com/voter-guide
Fresno: fresnobee.com/voter-guide
Modesto: modbee.com/voter-guide
Merced: mercedsunstar.com/voter-guide
San Luis Obispo: sanluisobispo.com/voter-guide
This story was originally published May 18, 2026 at 4:45 AM with the headline "How, and why, do we endorse California candidates? Ask the journalists who do it."
