Archive: Opinions

EditorialElection season is here, and I have started interviewing all the local candidates running for Lansing Town office.  I enjoy these interviews, because I get to do what most people never do: I ask them why I should vote for them and look into their eyes as they answer me.  Then I go through it again when I edit the transcripts for the Star.

I edit out the 'ums' and the 'I thinks' and I sometimes rearrange portions of an interview to improve the flow and make them make more sense.  When I do that last, it is usually because I asked questions in an illogical order, not because the candidate answered incorrectly.  The interviews take between a half hour and an hour, and as you can see for yourself, the transcripts are quite long.  But they are in the candidates' own words, and I think that is important.  You don't need me to tell you what they said when you can read it for yourself.

I rarely ask more than a half dozen questions.  I let them take the discussion where they may, asking follow-up questions as appropriate.  But I always think, when someone comments on the length of the interviews, about how people do talk in depth about only six things.

Most local politicians tell me they don't like the politics part of it.  But I've only had one person refuse a face to face interview about their candidacy, and as all the opponents appeared in print that person relented in the eleventh hour.  To me it's important to ask the same questions of all the candidates for any given office, with the only exceptions being the obvious differences between an incumbent and a challenger.  That means the first one I interview is the guinea pig -- if a topic comes up I didn't think to ask about I make a note of it so I'll ask the others the same thing.  That first interview is a little more free-form, and thus more fun for me.

I like these interviews, because the best of them are with people who see ways to make Lansing a better place, and are willing to do the work to make those things happen.  In the discussion it's theory, but if they win it becomes practice.  And then it is fun to see how those plans work out.  It's good for a community to have choice.  Too often there is no way to really know what the candidates are about beyond commercials, signs, and bullet-point speeches.  I hope these in-depth interviews are useful to you, and will encourage you to go to the polls and vote for the best candidates.

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