WURD endorses Kamala Harris in first-ever political endorsement

WURD — the Black-owned talk radio station based in Philadelphia — has officially endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, four days out from the general election.

“WURD Radio is a marketplace for ideas, conversation and public dialogue. That said, we are also keenly aware of the extraordinary stakes of the current presidential election — and the clear and present threat that Donald Trump represents to our community,” the station said in a statement posted to its website Friday. “For this reason, we have decided to take the unprecedented step of endorsing Kamala Harris.”

Since its founding by physician Walter P. Lomax in 2003, WURD had not endorsed a political candidate at any level, a decision the organization said it “stood by” until Friday.

WURD said its decision was informed in part by the fallout of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong pressuring their editorial boards to not issue endorsements of Harris. Both papers have seen intense pushback from the decisions, with the Post losing over 200,000 subscribers in the wake of the non-endorsement.

“We are witnessing how democracy dies — in the dark pockets of greedy owners,” WURD said.

The radio station is the only Black-owned talk radio station in Pennsylvania, as well as only one of three remaining nationally, a statistic WURD also said it took into account before levying the endorsement.

When President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, WURD radio host Andrea Lawful left the station after it was revealed that Lawful pulled from a set of questions provided by the Biden campaign to interview the president on-air in July. The interview followed a poor debate performance from Biden that had pundits, Democratic operatives, and Biden’s own staff question if Biden should remain in the race.

» READ MORE: Andrea Lawful-Sanders leaves WURD after Biden campaign provides questions for Joe Biden interview

“It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer,” a Biden campaign spokesperson told the Washington Post at the time. WURD president and CEO Sara Lomax, however, said that using the agreed-upon questions violated “our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners,” jeopardized trust, and “is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.”

Lawful had arranged the interview and reviewed the list of questions without the knowledge of WURD’s management.

Before making the endorsement, WURD said it took into account how Harris and former President Donald Trump would address issues of consequence to Philadelphia’s Black community, such as reproductive freedom and maternal mortality, student loan forgiveness, and the causes of systemic poverty. In Philadelphia, non-Hispanic Black women made up 43% of people giving births but more than 73% of pregnancy-related deaths in Philadelphia from 2013 to 2018, according to a 2022 study from the City of Philadelphia. Historically, Philly residents pay off more student loan debt than college graduates living in other major American cities.

“These policies that impact our community are issues that the Harris-Walz campaign has committed to implementing,” WURD said.

» READ MORE: Opinion: VP Harris’ interview with the National Association of Black Journalists was subdued — a sharp contrast to the crazy of Trump’s session

WURD’s statement also likened this moment to the election of Barack Obama in 2008 in that Harris’ identity would “signal a new era of possibility for young women everywhere, especially Black and Brown women and girls.”

“We have seen how the Black community has been maligned and underestimated during this election,” the station said. “WURD Radio has been able to offer a counternarrative … This is our work, day and day out.”