The editorial board of the Boston Globe has every right to endorse any candidate it chooses to support. Eight days before the election, the paper threw its still-considerable powers of persuasion and coronation behind Charlie Baker. Again, that is fine. What is not fine, however, is the editorial and journalistic sleight of hand presented in the Globe’s written rationale behind the endorsement. The Baker-infused giddiness that prompted WBZ’s Jon Keller and Dan Rea and the Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfeld to blurt out a few insights about the newspaper and publisher John Henry’s support of Baker makes a re-reading of the text of the endorsement interesting and dismaying.

Keller let the cat out the bag first when he assessed the startling Globe poll showing Baker nine points ahead of Coakley. Given that virtually all previous polls had depicted a tight race, Keller refused to swallow the new number whole and, surprisingly, offered that the poll was tilted more toward conservative and independent respondents. In short, he was unwilling, though likely eager, to latch on to the poll. In years past, the Globe had rarely, if ever, trumpeted its own polling with such banner-headline fanfare as the Baker-Coakley numbers. For what it’s worth, a New York Times/CBS poll taken during the same time frame as the Globe’s gave Coakley a five-point lead. Who knows? Still, it’s worth noting that Keller works for WBZ – a CBS outlet.

On Dan Rea’s Nightside broadcast on WBZ Radio on Oct. 27, the host was chatting with the Battenfeld and Globe editorial board member Dante Ramos. When Rea asked Battenfeld if there was surprise at the Herald over the Globe’s endorsement, Battenfeld replied that he and his colleagues were not surprised at all because of John Henry’s friendship with and political support of Baker. Ramos weakly offered that there was a lot of disagreement on the board over the endorsement, but punted when pressed on Henry’s influence in the decision.

In the text, the editorial board played intellectual and journalistic sleight of hand by omitting any mention of Baker and the Big Dig, especially when compared with the paper’s stance in 2010.

The endorsement of Baker ran on Oct. 27, and after damning Coakley with a flurry of faint praise, the nameless board editor rationalized the decision. Obliquely tying Coakley to “cracks” in the state’s “Department of Children and Families [DCF], the Probation Department, the state crime lab, the board that regulates compounding pharmacies, the state Labor Department’s unemployment system, [and] the Health Connector website,” the board lent unspoken legitimacy to the gubernatorial contest’s vilest and most dishonest ad. That is the one in which an earnest, sonorous voice, backed by grainy black-and-white imagery, assigns partial culpability to Coakley for the tragic deaths of children as a result of DCF errors and incompetence. At the ad’s end, ubiquitous Baker mouthpiece Beth Lindstrom’s knowing smile is meant to hammer home the “truth” of the distortions. Yes, Coakley has also run several misleading ads, but they fall far short of that particular ad by Baker supporters, if not his campaign itself.

The endorsement correctly portrays Baker as a social moderate, but in presenting his record of service in the Weld and Cellucci administrations, there is that glaring omission – not one mention of his stewardship of the Big Dig. Apparently, the Big Dig is of no concern to the Globe in 2014; however, in 2010, exactly the opposite held true when Baker challenged Deval Patrick in the gubernatorial race.

Here is just one of many examples from the Globe’s own 2010 files from a lengthy investigative piece by Michael Rezendes and Noah Bierman in the June 13, 2010 edition. Under the headline “Baker’s Role in Big Dig Financing Process Was Anything but ‘Small’ -- Records Undercut His Campaign Claim,” the reporters wrote: “Throughout his campaign for governor, Republican Charles D. Baker has sought to minimize his involvement in the $15 billion Big Dig.

When he launched his candidacy last summer, Baker said he played a ‘small role in the Big Dig.’ Days later, his campaign said that, as the state’s budget chief under governors William Weld and Paul Cellucci, he had a ‘limited role in the financing process.’
“And in March, Baker told a Globe columnist that when it came to figuring out how to pay for the massive project at one critical juncture in the 1990s, he was only ‘one of about 50 people’ involved.

“But those statements are sharply at odds with a picture of Baker’s financial leadership of the project that emerges from hundreds of pages of memorandums, letters, and other documents culled from his four-year tenure as secretary of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, from 1994 to 1998…”

Throughout the 2010 campaign, the Globe scrutinized Baker’s role in the Big Dig. Now, in the paper’s 2014 endorsement, nary a mention of the most controversial public works project in the nation’s annals. Nary a mention that it was Martha Coakley who went after Bechtel and Baker’s other Big Dig cronies to seek justice for the family of a woman who paid for her life as a result of shoddy workmanship and shoddy management of the Big Dig.

Again, the Globe has every right to endorse one candidate over the other. John Henry is the publisher, and as anyone who has been within earshot of a newspaper or magazine knows, a publisher has the final say in endorsements if he or she chooses to exercise that prerogative. When Henry purchased the Globe, a great many readers worried that he might influence the paper’s objective coverage of his Red Sox. Thankfully for Red Sox Nation, the concern has proven unfounded. Perhaps the same cannot be said anymore in a far more important realm – political endorsements.

As of this column’s writing, we don’t know if our next governor is Charlie Baker or Martha Coakley. Many observers will point out that Martin Walsh won the mayoral race without the endorsement of either the Globe or the Herald. If, as the smart money says, our next governor is Charlie Baker, let’s hope that a questionable and controversial poll and a whitewashed endorsement will not have played a prominent role.