Whip List: Trump gets Las Vegas, but Clinton dominates newspaper endorsements

Two weeks before Election Day, more than half of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers have endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — and just one has endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Trump broke his winless streak on Saturday, when the Las Vegas Review-Journal compared the Republican nominee to revolutionaries who have upset entrenched orders to bring needed change.

“Mr. Trump represents neither the danger his critics claim nor the magic elixir many of his supporters crave,” the Review-Journal wrote. “But he promises to be a source of disruption and discomfort to the privileged, back-scratching political elites for whom the nation’s strength and solvency have become subservient to power’s pursuit and preservation.”

The Review-Journal has the distinction of being the only major newspaper in America owned by a man who contributes millions of dollars to political causes every year. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has donated to super PACs backing Trump, purchased the paper last year.

Trump’s only other endorsements have come from the Santa Barbara News-Press and the St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press. Neither paper is among the 100 largest in the nation by circulation.

This weekend, five major papers urged readers to vote for Clinton, including two that endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney four years ago.

One of those papers, the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., noted the disparity between Clinton and Trump, in the eyes of the nation’s editorial writers. The conservative paper based in the Chicago suburbs said it had expected to back the Republican candidate, assuming that candidate was someone such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

“In endorsing Clinton, we’re not the only newspaper to repudiate Donald Trump. In fact, every major newspaper in the country has done so. The virtual universality of editorial board opposition to him is unprecedented, from perspectives across the nation of every ideological bent, from East Coast to West Coast and everywhere in between,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson has won endorsements from three papers. USA Today, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Deseret News of Utah, which has never before endorsed in a presidential race, have urged readers to vote against Trump.

“Should his mouth, so unfettered by reason or humility, be loosed on the world with the power of the Oval Office behind it, we could hardly blame friendly nations for withholding trust or unfriendly ones for raising their guard,” the Star-Telegram wrote of Trump this weekend.

The San Jose Mercury News, Newsday, the Rockford Register Star and the Tacoma News Tribune also backed Clinton this weekend.

The Nashville Tennessean, which backed President Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012, became the latest paper to break precedent by declining to endorse a specific candidate. Instead, Tennessean columnists made cases for both candidates in separate columns.

The ratio of newspaper editorial boards that have endorsed Clinton over Trump is unprecedented in the history of modern presidential elections. Editorial endorsements are more lopsided than any year including 1972, when more than 90 percent of newspaper editorial boards backed Richard Nixon for re-election over Democratic nominee George McGovern.

Read more from The Hill:

Gary Johnson getting more paper endorsements than Trump

Updated Oct. 23 at 9:14 p.m.