Endorsements are the decision of CDN’s editorial board, composed of Executive Editor and Opinion page editor Ron Judd, Publisher Cynthia Pope and nonvoting advisory member Dean Wright, a veteran journalist, moderator and ethics adviser. They do not reflect the opinions of reporters nor other CDN staff members or employees. Endorsement deliberations are kept separate from news planning and editing. Endorsement editorials represent the consensus of our board.
As a private, independent news source with reporters and editors engaged in daily election news, CDN chooses to make endorsements in races we believe have the greatest impact on the largest number of readers/voters. This year, those are contested Whatcom County legislative races in the 40th and 42nd districts, the state governor’s race, state initiatives and the 2nd District congressional seat. We regret that we cannot endorse more races, all of which are important, and we hope to do so in the future.
We also limit our endorsement choices so we can conduct more thorough reporting on the candidates or issues in question. We meet with all willing candidates face-to-face for an on-the-record interview of one hour or longer. We are grateful this year for the personal participation of the candidates who showed up, and regret that one candidate in both the congressional race and state governor’s race declined our invitation.
Guiding our process is CDN’s Citizens Agenda program, through which we solicit topics of interest from readers to guide our election coverage. All candidates provide answers to the top questions submitted by readers; those responses are reprinted in our Voter Guide. (Candidates who failed to return the questionnaire by the assigned deadline are so noted.)
The questions provide a starting point for our interviews with candidates, who are allowed time to extrapolate in person. Those interviews were video recorded and are presented with very little editing at cascadiadaily.com.
We hope CDN endorsements provide useful perspective, from an independent news source, for voter choices. We seek not to tell readers whom to vote for, but simply share our own choices and reasoning as concerned citizens and journalists.
For questions or thoughts on our process, contact Ron Judd, CDN’s executive editor, at ronjudd@casdcadiadaily.com.
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