Following up on the contention from the District Attorney’s Office that Bonnie Dumanis declared she would not endorse candidates for public office — only to clarify that she would actually endorse candidates for sheriff, city attorney, attorney general and judicial posts — I decided to go watch her press conference from the time.
This is the entirety of her prepared remarks about not endorsing political candidates.
To underscore the unbiased and transparent mission of this office, I am announcing today that I will no longer personally endorse political candidates except in unusual circumstances. In the past, I have endorsed political candidates where I felt it was in the public’s best interest. However, public integrity work is difficult enough without the possibility of having our motives questioned or impaired by politics. So let me be clear: I will not allow this office to be used as a pawn during political campaigns or allow the incorrect perception that we are anything other than completely objective. Except in unusual circumstances, we will not investigate allegations against a candidate during a campaign season. We will wait until after the election is complete.
Seeing that she did not, in fact, mention at all this huge caveat that she would, in fact, endorse candidates for all the positions wherein her opinion on the matter may at all be relevant, I called her spokesman Paul Levikow back to ask what the deal was.
He said that those, in fact, were the entire contents of her prepared remarks that day and that after her speech, while taking questions from the press, she clarified that she would actually be endorsing political candidates.
He wondered why I wasn’t there to hear it.