Subscribers, write your endorsements

Selection Sunday for March Madness is just two days away.

Today, however, May Madness begins. The political game is afoot!

By today’s 5 p.m. deadline, everyone who intends to run in the May 15 primaries should have declared their candidacy. From the far left, the far right and that broad pasture in between, there’s going to be something for everybody in this field. The Press will publish a complete list of all the local filings in tomorrow’s paper and on cdapress.com.

But the message now isn’t about the candidates. It’s about the voters — particularly the most knowledgeable voters, Press subscribers.

Every election season, The Press welcomes endorsement letters of 275 or fewer words. The rule has long been one letter per writer, per election cycle. If you want to endorse one candidate, you can use all 275 words extolling that person’s virtues. If you want to endorse a dozen, well, you’ve got to cover them all in that one epistle.

The change this time around is that for the first time, The Press will accept endorsement letters from Press subscribers only. If you’ve been a paying Press subscriber for 90 days or more when you submit your letter, we’ll find a way to get it in the paper and post it online as long as it’s received no later than May 9. Consider it free advertising for the candidate(s) of your choice.

If you’re not a paying customer of at least three months, you can email your endorsement letter to friends or post it on Facebook. It won’t be shared with tens of thousands of local readers in The Press, most of them voters.

It’s true that this new policy is meant to enhance the value of a newspaper subscription. There should be privileges that go with paying your dues, and the ability to pen some positives about your leaders of choice shall now be one of them. But it’s also likely that the most informed endorsement letters will come from people who have been paying attention to the issues, and nobody does that better than newspaper readers.

So now that the field is almost set for the May 15 primary elections, subscriber/writers, start your keyboards. Mail your endorsement letter to Mike Patrick: mpatrick@cdapress.com