NEA Endorses Webber (and, Uh..., All the Other Dems)

OK, I realize I'm not the fastest blogger/Tweeter, one-man-band journalist etc around these parts. I'm an old guy and trying to get over that old 20th Century newspaper mindset in which in most cases you have until the end of the work day to get your story out.

But ever-so-often there's an advantage to that.

Take this morning, when checking my email. One of the first things I saw was one from the Alan Webber campaign that said the National Education Association had endorsed him.

Given how important education has been in my life, and the lives of my family and friends, I can’t describe how much it means to me that professional educators have publicly expressed their faith in me—specifically, in my commitment to public education, and in my ability to deliver on the investments we so desperately need to build a brighter future for our children.

I don't write about every endorsement that comes down, but I thought this one probably blogworthy. After all, the other teacher's union, the American Federation of Teachers, already had endorsed Howie Morales.

But I got distracted by other things, (mostly making coffee) and decided to wait. And I'm glad I did. Shortly after 9 a.m., the Lawrence Rael campaign sent an email saying Rael had been endorsed by the NEA. But his email had a little extra information:

I am pleased to announce that I have been endorsed by the National Education Association (NEA-NM), along with all five Democratic gubernatorial candidates.

(And yes, the Rael email did use red letters for that last part.)

A few minutes later, a similar email came from the Morales campaign. I suppose Gary King and Linda Lopez might do the same later today.

In other words, Webber told the truth, but not the whole truth. Sometimes it's good to go make some coffee before jumping on the first email to come along.

(Speaking of slow, I just noticed that my colleague Milan Simonich beat me to blogging this!)

UPDATE 2:57 pm: Webber's campaign manager, Neri Holguin just responded to this post:

Of course it was never our intention to cause confusion but we fully expected each campaign to tout their own NEA-NM endorsements—and quickly. Previously, we followed an example by another campaign with respect to joint endorsements and no confusion seemed to result from that, but lesson learned. We worked hard to earn NEA-NM's endorsement and we're proud of it.