The Biggest Non-Endorsements Of 2024

When The Washington Post announced last week that its editorial board would not endorse Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump for president, the newspaper invited a flood of criticism — and more than 250,000 cancellations from apparently irate subscribers.

It was perhaps the most controversial non-endorsement of the 2024 election cycle. But it was far from the first.

For months now, notable politicians, celebrities and institutions have been saying that they won’t back anyone for president this year, at least not publicly. Since nobody seems to track non-endorsements, HuffPost has assembled this partial list of sideline sitters and their stated rationales. (For a list of actual endorsements, Wikipedia is a pretty good source.)

Until this year, the Post’s editorial board had made an endorsement in every presidential election for three decades. The paper’s editorial page editor approved an endorsement of Harris that was being drafted earlier this month and reviewed by Post owner Jeff Bezos, NPR reported.

But CEO William Lewis announced Friday that the paper would be “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” citing a Post policy that was in place through the Richard Nixon era. He said the move was “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.”

Bezos defended the move in a Monday op-ed, with the billionaire saying that “endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election” but “create a perception of bias.”

The reaction from high-profile journalists, including Post alums, has been brutal. Marty Baron, a former longtime executive editor, called the paper’s decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” He predicted that Trump would take the non-endorsement as “an invitation to further intimidate” Bezos, hinting that the billionaire may have feared retribution from a possible Trump administration if the Post endorsed Harris.

Before Bezos infuriated Post readers, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong prompted his own wave of cancellations by saying that Los Angeles’ paper of record would stay out of the presidential race.

Soon-Shiong said last week that although he did not green-light an endorsement, he had allowed his paper’s editorial board to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate.”

“Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” he wrote on X.

The LA Times reported Monday that it had received around 1,000 emails and letters about the decision. “About 90% of them criticized the paper and its owner,” the story noted.

Prior to this year, the Teamsters had endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton, backing him in 1992 (and nobody in 1996). But union President Sean O’Brien announced last month that the group representing 1.3 million members would be sitting out the 2024 race, with member polling showing strong support for Trump among the rank and file.

The decision by the union’s executive board angered Harris supporters throughout organized labor, especially since Harris and other Democrats saved Teamster pension plans with no GOP support. “That alone should be enough to cement a commitment from the IBT,” Jim Hoffa, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ former longtime president, told HuffPost at the time.

Trump, who was hostile to unions throughout his 2017-2021 presidential term, has boasted about the non-endorsement. “Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’” the former president said at a New York campaign stop. “So that was an honor for me.”

Former GOP Vice President Mike Pence’s decision this year not to endorse his old running mate didn’t come as a big surprise. After all, it was Trump who once whipped up a crowd of rioters chanting “hang Mike Pence” while mounting a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. As Pence was being whisked away to safety on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was calling him a coward for not overturning the 2020 presidential election results.

“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said last year, months after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy.

But that doesn’t mean Pence has thrown his support behind the Democratic ticket. “I could never vote for Kamala Harris as president of the United States or Tim Walz as her running mate,” he said at a conservative forum in August. “Period. Paragraph.”

Soon-to-retire Utah Sen. Mitt Romney isn’t taking a side in the election, either. The former 2012 GOP presidential nominee has been knocking Trump for years, famously calling him a “phony” and a “fraud” in a withering takedown during the 2016 primary contest. He has publicly said more than once during the current campaign that the GOP standard-bearer won’t be getting his vote.

“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” he said at a recent University of Utah event.

Romney, however, has stopped short of endorsing Harris. The moderate Republican suggested that he wants to have a hand in some day rebuilding the GOP, and that throwing his weight behind Harris would make that more difficult. But he has also acknowledged that he’s well out of step with what the Republican Party has become.

“My wing of the party is like a chicken wing, all right?” Romney said in the spring. “It’s a little, tiny thing that doesn’t take the bird off the ground.”

Former Republican President George W. Bush hasn’t made an endorsement in this year’s race. His office has said Bush “retired from presidential politics years ago,” even though he publicly backed GOP candidates John McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012.

Bush has bemoaned the Republican Party becoming “isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist” in the Trump era, but has held back from criticizing Trump by name.

Bush’s old running mate doesn’t share his sense of restraint. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris and said Trump “can never be trusted with power again.”

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said.

Bush’s daughter Barbara Pierce Bush has also endorsed Harris, telling People that she campaigned for the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

Dwayne Johnson, the actor and wrestler also known as The Rock, publicly backed Harris and running mate Joe Biden during their 2020 run for the White House, but he has decided to stay quiet this time around.

“It’s between me and the ballot box,” Johnson told Fox News earlier this year.

Johnson has been talked about as a potential candidate for high office. Last year, he told comedian Trevor Noah that in 2022 he received a “visit from the parties” asking if he’d consider running for president.

Credit to anyone who had this one on their endorsement-controversy bingo card.

Chappell Roan, the Missouri-born singer who rose to stardom in the past year, told the Guardian in September that she wouldn’t be endorsing anyone for president. “There are so many things that I would want to change [in the government]. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone,” she said. “There’s problems on both sides.”

Facing a backlash from progressive fans for her “both sides” remark, Roan later explained that she was voting for Harris but still wouldn’t endorse her for the presidency. “Obviously, fuck the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left,” she said on TikTok. Roan has been an outspoken critic of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

“I’m not going to settle for what the options that are in front of me. And you’re not going to make me feel bad for that,” she said.