Newspaper Rescinds Endorsement After GOP Candidate Goes Birther: ‘He Has Done Nothing But Embarrass Us’

Last week, the The Charlotte Observer endorsed Republican congressional candidate Jim Pendergraph, but quickly backtracked after the candidate joined notorious birther Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the campaign trail, and raised his own doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.

“I have reason to be suspicious,” he said of Obama’s birth certificate. “But I don’t know. I haven’t seen the facts. I think there’s a lot of smoke and generally when there’s smoke there’s got to be fire somewhere.”

The Observer, which originally praised Pendergraph as “conservative” was not pleased, publishing a scathing retraction of its support today for the North Carolina candidate:

After winning the Observer’s endorsement in his bid for Congress, he has done nothing but embarrass us and himself.

By buddying up to one of America’s more hateful egomaniacs and then joining with fringe “birthers” to question President Obama’s citizenship, Pendergraph has contradicted much of what he told the Observer’s editorial board in his endorsement interview last month. As a result, we have lost faith in him, and urge voters to consider Edwin Peacock or Ric Killian in the 9th Congressional District race.

The paper’s editorial board went on to say that it had originally thought Pendergraph was intelligent and reasonable and moderate, but that they don’t trust him now and are afraid he will “say whatever a given audience wants to hear, if it will help him get elected.”