During the 2004 election, the Turn Left staff generally backed moderate Democrat John Kerry for the presidency over more liberal candidates such as independent Ralph Nader.
Turn Left attracted much notice among Cornellians in the spring of 2005 for its scathing attack on The Cornell Daily Sun in response to what it considered poor reporting of major issues on campus, such as the 2005 Student Assembly elections scandal, and a dearth of quality opinion writing.
Turn Left was the only publication at Cornell that consistently covered the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
[8] Lim later removed himself from the presidency of the Democrats in a cloud of controversy,[9] and Cornell students launched a campaign to discredit the allegedly fraudulent March 2005 Student Assembly elections[10] – both events influenced in large part by TL reporting and opinion.
In the Spring of 2007, co-editors Shai Akabas '09 and Ethan Felder '09 launched a successful but controversial campaign to change the name of the publication to The Cornell Progressive.