Congressional endorsements

The Enquirer's endorsements in the congressional races went up on the Web this afternoon and will be in Sunday morning's paper. We've endorsed John Cranley, Jean Schmidt, Geoff Davis, Mike Turner and John Boehner. I get a lot of questions after we make endorsements -- often of the "Are you out of your mind!!?" variety.

That's OK, opinions are what the editorial business is all about and we expect that yours often will clash with ours. We had a lot of comment after we came out for Ken Blackwell over Ted Strickland in the Ohio governor's race last week. Some asked if we were schizophrenic because the endorsement spent a good deal of space excoriating Blackwell for his conscienceless implication that Strickland somehow supports child molesters -- and then said we supported Blackwell over Strickland anyway.

I expect we will get a lot of questions about our picks in the congressional races as well -- with people wondering why we support a Republican incumbent in one race, but urge the Republican incumbent be dumped in the neighboring district.

I can only say that each race is taken separately. We judge the candidates against each other only in the races they are running, not in comparison to the candidates running next door. In the end, the endorsements represent the view of the newspaper as an institution, not the opinion of any single member of the editorial board.