The political tremor coming out of Los Angeles this week was the city’s largest newspaper, the L.A. Times, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris — a seismic decision from a national news outlet widely viewed as even further to the left than the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Now the spotlight is shining on the newspaper’s owner — biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles. Soon-Shiong is a political liberal but is also known to be a pragmatic businessman who is willing to cross the political aisle if it’s good for the bottom line. It was reportedly Soon-Shiong who overruled his own newspaper’s editorial board, blocking its plan to endorse Kamala Harris.
Instead, the L.A. Times said it won’t be endorsing any presidential candidate this cycle — after having endorsed Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
It doesn’t take a highly paid media analyst to read the tea leaves: Soon-Shiong must think former President Donald Trump will win in November. And for him to risk making enemies of his own journalists, not to mention his Los Angeles social circle, suggests he must be fairly certain of his hunch.
This should come as little surprise to anyone who has followed Soon-Shiong’s career. In the days after Trump’s victory in 2016, Soon-Shiong — who backed Hillary Clinton — was one of many business and political leaders seen visiting the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York. This was two years prior to his acquisition of the L.A. Times — though at the time, he was widely rumored to be circling the long-troubled newspaper.
Soon-Shiong’s biotech company NantWorks consists of a hugely diversified portfolio of mostly medical-related concerns, including pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. Much of his fortune is thanks to his cancer treatments like Abraxane, which received FDA approval in 2005 and has since gone on to become a blockbuster drug.
And therein lies the political rub. For Soon-Shiong’s businesses to flourish, he depends on government approval of his drugs and other medical innovations, which comes from the FDA. Earlier this year, his company ImmunityBio scored the agency’s approval for a new bladder cancer drug called Anktiva, which is expected to revolutionize treatment of the disease by reducing the need for surgery.
A potential second Trump administration is expected to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in some kind of leadership position at the FDA and other health-related agencies as part of his Make America Healthy Again movement.
Kennedy has sworn to clean up the FDA, freeing it from corporate influence and returning its bureaucracy to serving the American public.
Such potentially huge changes are no doubt on the minds of drugmakers around the world.
And it’s not just Soon-Shiong’s medical ventures that stand to be impacted by a second Trump presidency. The Trump-hating L.A. Times could also be affected — but in a positive way.
During Trump’s first term, L.A. Times digital subscriptions soared by threefold — with other left-wing news outlets experiencing similar spikes as they capitalized on anti-Trump rage-bait coverage.
Following the 2020 election, the newspaper has suffered tremendously as advertising revenue plummeted amidst growing consumer fears tied to record prices brought on by the Biden-Harris administration.
Soon-Shiong enacted painful layoffs in January, eliminating about a quarter of the newsroom.
The mood in the newsroom had already taken a nosedive due to prior internal clashes and especially the war in Gaza, with a sizable faction of young, woke reporters objecting to the way the newspaper was covering Israel.
There have been persistent rumors that Soon-Shiong has been looking to sell the Times after having unloaded the San Diego Union-Tribune last year. The Times is costing his family a fortune to run and his latest move to block its endorsement of Kamala Harris likely won’t improve his relationship with his own journalists.
But so far, he has denied he plans to sell the paper.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.