By Joe Spear
I learned long ago not to take lightly politicians who were running through your town hoping for a little publicity.
Go back to the year 1990. The third likeliest candidate to be governor walked unannounced through the newsroom door at lunchtime looking for a reporter. It being lunchtime, there were no reporters in the newsroom, except, of course, for the business reporter, always more industrious than the others.
Pointing out the political reporter was not in, I wasn’t sure I could help this gentleman. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. He just wanted to take a few minutes and discuss his agenda. Well, not wanting to be rude to a candidate for governor, I accepted his offer for an interview. More on that later.
It’s like a lot of requests we get lately. In fact, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Ken Pentel stopped in a week or so ago in the same manner — unannounced — and we couldn’t meet with him. We did send a reporter to his “meet and greet” later that evening for a short story. Unfortunately, we have to make judgments about how much time to spend with someone who by the accounts of a lot of reasonable people has no chance of being in contention.
Candidates need the media more than ever during a campaign, especially in an election that’s going to be close. It’s probably one reason The Free Press editorial board got an “exclusive” interview with Gov. Tim Pawlenty a week ago. The Free Press has a history of endorsing independents and Republicans from time to time, although we endorse many Democrats as well.
It may seem unfair, but usually you have more to gain by meeting with a sitting governor than a third-party candidate.
Local races key
Most of our locally produced political coverage will focus on local candidates. We aim to provide that information to readers that few other media outlets can or are willing to provide. We will use The Associated Press for much of the coverage of statewide candidates, including the governor’s race, the Senate race and the congressional races outside the 1st District.
We’ve continued our tradition of in-depth election issue stories. In these stories, we try to take an in-depth look at an issue and then have candidates respond in writing to how they would address that issue.
So far, we’ve written in-depth stories about the federal deficit and health care at the federal level. With these stories, we’ve included responses from 1st District congressional candidates Republican Gil Gutknecht and Democrat Tim Walz and 2nd District Independence Party candidate Doug Williams. Williams’ answers had to be edited for profanity.
On the Senate side, we’re including answers to our questions from Republican Mark Kennedy, Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald.
We’ve not included Green Party candidates or Constitutional Party candidates in our list because they do not have major party status like the Independence Party. That status is obtained in Minnesota by one candidate in the party getting at least 5 percent of the vote in the last election.
What gets covered?
We plan to cover each of the 12 legislative races in the Mankato region in some manner. Districts that just cover one part of a county in The Free Press readership area will get a little less coverage than those that include the heart of Mankato, North Mankato or St. Peter.
The 25 or so candidates in those races will however, have their views published as part of our six issue stories on the statewide races. Their biographies and main issues will also be included as part of the coverage on our Web site. All our election coverage is on the Free Press Web site at www.mankatofreepress.com. We’re also putting statewide election stories and an Ad-Watch feature exclusively on our Web site. These are usually stories that are worthwhile but that we didn’t have room for in the print edition.
In the statewide races, we usually will cover statewide candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and House races if they go to a place where they meet the public. Our policy is to go to each of these events, but not necessarily write a story if nothing new is said. Usually, there has to be something newsworthy to get coverage. Events that don’t offer anything new sometimes end up as a short item in our campaign notebook.
When candidates only make a stop at the Mankato Regional Airport as a statewide fly around, they are less likely to get coverage because they’re usually not meeting with local people. These are media-only events, designed to garner a photo opportunity or sound bite.
Letters to the editor
The letters to the editor have been flooding into The Free Press as we close in on the election. Our goal is to print all letters that meet our criteria: They must be 275 words or fewer, they must include sources of information that are not generally known. We reserve the right to edit for clarity, length, libel and taste. We do not accept form letters.
We have been leaving more space for letters, especially in the weekend newspapers, to get those letters published in a timely manner.
The letters are placed on the pages mostly in the order they get to the copy desk and in regard to how they will fit given the space available. But it is always our goal to publish as many letters as we can as quickly as we can.
Return to ’90
Back to the interview of our gubernatorial candidate in 1990.
We were done in 15 minutes. I had done my duty giving a little copy to this underdog. We probably needed to fill space in the paper, I thought.
Later that year, the leading Republican candidate lost his front-runner status in a controversy that involved allegations of skinny dipping and teenage girls, with a mistress thrown in for good measure.
The Democrats were having trouble hitting water falling out of a boat that year, so — you guessed it — the man looking for a reporter during lunch hour, Arne Carlson, went on to be governor of Minnesota for two terms.
Joe Spear is the managing editor of The Free Press. Contact him at 344-6382 or jspear@mankatofreepress.com
