La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

In its final issue before Tuesday’s election, the eight-page La Conner Weekly News published a cover story and four letters attacking – and even slandering – a candidate for the state legislature.

With no chance of rebuttal, Bill Bruch, a La Conner resident running for the state House of Representatives, was targeted by known Democrat operatives.

This is because Bruch, a Republican, along with the more than a quarter million people who signed the R-90 petition, is opposed to the mandatory sex education law pushed forward by his rival. The Democrat in this race is the one who made the motion to move the sex education law forward in the state legislature early this year.

Party activists often engage in mudslinging, but the press generally just reports the facts without picking sides.

It saddens me that our local newspaper has become a strictly left-leaning partisan publication whose editor decided to put his thumb on the scale for the primary election.

I always thought journalists are taught to be fair and unbiased, regardless of their personal opinions. Engaging in and abetting character assassination based on personal politics seems malicious.

Bobbie Butterworth

Shelter Bay