CARLTON FLETCHER: Endorse these candidates? Not on your life

“How do you sleep at night?”

— John Lennon

This newspaper quit doing political candidate endorsements several years ago. I’ll admit to ambivalence about the decision: I think a publication should have the courage to offer its opinion on such matters with clear reasoning for encouraging its readers to support one candidate over the other, but I also understand how such opinions can alienate readers who support the candidate who is not endorsed.

I also understand the reality of politics, circa 2021: Except for an ever-shrinking group of Americans, today’s voters are going to cast their ballots for the candidates who align themselves with the voters’ preferred party, no matter the candidates’ qualifications.

Partisan politics is alive and sickeningly well in our country.

I was thinking recently about the days when I had the opportunity to sit in on — and offer my opinion about — discussions of political candidates from the local to the national level in advance of deciding on endorsements … this as I watched about the 842,316th political ad on TV. I don’t care how involved you might be in politics, if you are not burned out … fed up … sickened … angered by the multi-multi-multimillion-dollars wasted on the mudslinging that stands for politicking for the two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, you are either one of the candidates or a junkie who has serious problems.

As many have pointed out — not that they needed to — the ads funded by about a half-billion dollars in donations to the campaigns of Kelly Loeffler, Jon Ossoff, David Perdue and Raphael Warnock have not answered one vital question voters — the ones whose decisions aren’t dictated by the “D” or “R” beside a candidate’s name on the ballot — need to make an informed decision: What are you going to do for the people who elect you once you’re in office?

Instead, the campaign ads are about the various candidates’ opponents: a sordid mix of lies, half-truths, conjecture and party talking points with the intent of demonizing opponents rather than celebrating the supposed strengths of the candidates themselves. I thought Georgia campaign ads had jumped the shark with that stupid Brian Kemp holding a gun on the teenage boy who came calling on his daughter spot — “now that’s a real Georgia man,” the ad sought to point out, but it merely made the state more of a laughingstock … but, it should be noted, the ad actually worked as Kemp — with a little help from his decision to rule on the eligibility of state voters in a race in which he was involved — won the election.

But that bit of campaign inanity was a quaint “I Like Ike,” “Choose a Work Horse, not a Show Horse”-ish ad compared to the putrid hogwash that Georgians have been subjected to since Nov. 3, when it was determined the two Senate races would head for a runoff and, a few days later, when it became apparent that the two races could help determine the balance of power in the Senate.

I interviewed Ossoff, Loeffler and Warnock during the course of the campaign, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Perdue on a number of occasions during his tenure in the Senate. If I were describing them based on my observation of their personal characteristics, I’d have good and bad to say about each of them, based only on what I’ve heard and read. But the fact that the candidates allowed their campaigns to be hijacked by consulting firms that decided the way to win is to sling more mud than their opponents — truth be damned — has led me to reconsider my opinion of individuals who early in the race — before the runoff — were all about what they wanted to do in office, not puppets of deep-pocketed individuals who live by the win-at-all-costs ethos.

Several of this newspaper’s readers criticized me recently for “running a feature on Warnock’s father on the front page of the paper,” many saying I was running a “free political ad” for my “favorite candidate.” I reached out to one via email only because I wanted at least someone to know that I did not make the decision to run that story (on the front or anywhere … I was in North Carolina at the time) and would not have done so even if Warnock was indeed my favorite candidate. The one lesson people like Jim Hendricks and Danny Carter always taught me is to be as fair as possible.

Truth be told, the way these candidates’ campaigns have devolved, I couldn’t in good conscious endorse — or vote for — any of the four … even if they slipped a little of those hundreds of millions of dollars my way. I am, quite frankly, ashamed that these candidates are vying to represent my state.