What Close Race? WashPost Kept Warner-Gillespie Campaign Off the Front Page for Months

The squeaker of an election between Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Ed Gillespie is not a result that was either foreseen or desired by the liberals at The Washington Post. They didn't want it to be a close race, and tried to insure it wasn't close by burying it. On September 14, I noted Gillespie's entire campaign was consigned to the back pages of the Metro section, like his ad campaign against Obamacare:

The shamelessly partisan Post wants to publicize nothing that helps Gillespie. This story appeared on page B-4. So which Gillespie story has appeared on Page 1? It came on September 3 with this headline: “Va. underdog Gillespie may have his eye on next race.” He was deemed a loser: “And just like other operatives who ran as long-shot aspirants, Gillespie has much to gain even if he loses in November.”

Even the news that Gillespie’s down 22 points to Warner was put on page B4. The headline noticed “Republican Gillespie still struggles with name ID in his quest to deprive Warner of a second term in Senate.”

This pattern continued all the way until Election Day. The Warner-Gillespie race never drew an A-1 story in the last three months of the campaign, except for the dismissive story on how Gillespie the long-shot aspirant is just building name ID for the next race. The only A-section mentions came in opinion columns and Warner-endorsing Post editorials. The three Senate debates made it only to B-1, the front page of the Metro section.

One turning point in the campaign was the potentially damaging scoop on October 11 that Sen. Warner made a call to the son of state Sen. Phil Puckett to talk about job offers for Sen. Puckett's daughter to keep him from quitting the state Senate and torpedoing Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. That was placed on B-1, too...even though the Post was scandalized on the front page in June when Puckett resigned and his daughter accepted a judgeship.

In fact, when the Post reported on October 3 that Governor Terry McAuliffe's chief of staff left a voicemail for Sen. Puckett about job offers, the Post put that story on A-1. Gillespie's campaign made an ad about Warner's call in the Puckett matter, which the Post reported in the back pages and questioned its accuracy. Likewise, when Warner made a sleazy ad about Gillespie lobbying for dictators, the Post put it on B-4.

Even in the closing weekend, when polls put the race at seven points, the Post was still putting the stories on B-1 or C-1, the front of Metro. Oh, if this campaign had gotten a mere fraction of the flood of (gushy) coverage the Post issued on the death of their old executive editor Ben Bradlee, might this race have ended differently?