San Diego". In e-mails obtained by Williams, Lynch was quoted as indicating that if the Dole Food Company obtained a long-term contract, that the Port's independence governance would be questioned in editorial coverage. Williams said the effort showed "the extent to which the newspaper's new owners will go to push their vision for a football stadium on the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal", Endorsements and polling During the 2012 mayoral election the owners of the U-T donated to Republican City Council Member Carl DeMaio's campaign, and the newspaper ran several prominent editorials favoring DeMaio. Those endorsements were wrapped around the front section of the newspaper on a separate page, "as though they were even more important" than the front page. In October 2012, a poll was taken by the U-T asking respondents to choose between DeMaio and Democratic Congressman Bob Filner in the mayoral election to be held in November. A rival news outlet noted that "Employees of a newspaper, television / radio station, marketing / public opinion research company or the city of San Diego—or who live with someone employed in one of those fields" were excluded from the poll results, which showed the Republican leading the Democrat, 46 percent to 36 percent. Reporter Kelly Davis of SDCityBeat.com wrote: "Common sense dictates that those votes [by city employees or those living with them] would swing in Filner's favor due to DeMaio's long-running feud with city-employee unions." But U-T assignment editor Michael Smolens replied that "city employees were excluded to avoid political entanglements" in other parts of the ballot as well as in the mayor's race. Poll results Despite the newspaper's efforts, DeMaio lost to Filner. Lynch handed day-to-day operations to another executive in February 2014, and editor Jeff Light became company president in January 2015. In 2016, Light was named publisher. Publishers William Jeff Gatewood founded the newspaper, which first published October 10, 1868. He sold his interest to Charles P. Taggart in May 1869. Edward "Ned" Wilkerson Bushyhead, 1868–1873 with various partners, beginning with Taggart. Bushyhead (1832–1907) was a miner, publisher and lawman who was born in Tennessee. Part Cherokee, he was the son of a Baptist preacher, whom he accompanied from Georgia to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears at the age of seven. Having moved to San Diego, he became the "silent" publisher of the San Diego Union. In 1873, he sold the newspaper. In 1882,