Congressman Sam Farr’s office took a botched headline in stride this week after the Monterey County Herald reported his congressional seat was vacant.
“It appears April Fools’ Day came early this year,” Farr said in a statement yesterday. “Contrary to this morning's Monterey County Herald headline—I have not retired or resigned and have no plan to do so. And I have every intention of running again. California’s 20th (formerly 17th) Congressional seat is not vacant.”
So what was this confusing election story? A Herald staff report announced Mike Lebarre, a lab technician from King City, is running against Farr for his seat this year. That part’s all true. But the story’s print headline yesterday, Feb. 1, read “LeBarre eyes Farr's vacant Congress Seat.” The “vacant” part wasn’t.
The current headline on the Herald website isn't problematic. It reads “King City man announces run for Farr's seat in congress.” Again: all true.
“All we’re concerned about is making sure our constituents don’t get false information,” says Farr spokesman David Beltran.
The meat of the paper's staff report was on point. Both the Herald and the Santa Cruz Sentinel are reporting that Lebarre, a Republican, will challenge Farr for the open primaries in June. The top two vote-getters will run off in the November election. It will likely be a difficult race for Lebarre, since he will be running against a popular incumbent in a liberal district and not—as the Herald's report suggested—against himself.
The Monterey County Herald ran a correction about the headline in Thursday’s paper. Editor Royal Calkins spoke briefly with Santa Cruz Weekly about the matter too. “The copy editor made a mistake,” says Calkins. “It was an unfortunate error. We corrected it immediately.”
Beltran says his office also spoke on the phone with the Herald yesterday. The phone call, says Beltran, went off without a hitch. “There was nothing unusual about it,” says Beltran. “It was just a call between two professionals who can talk about this.”
