Covering the Elections

I’ve always thought I had a passion for politics. I studied politics in school, earned a degree in political science, and became a journalist with a penchant for covering political issues and elections.

I use the word passion, because in my mind I equate the word with desire, excitement and enjoyment. But the other day, one of my colleagues here at KCTS 9 told me that the word passion didn’t originally mean those things. It was more akin to pain and suffering.

In fact, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, the modern journalist’s un-admitted best friend, passion, comes from the Latin word patior, which means to suffer or endure. Hence the explanation for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. (I never did understand why it was called that, but never cared enough to look it up.)

As we head into an extremely busy election season here on KCTS 9 Connects, you could say that we have a passion for politics… in every sense of the word. In the modern sense, we’re very excited about what’s on tap:

A Governor’s race in Washington featuring a rematch between Chris Gregoire and Dino Rossi. Looks like Dino will finally get a chance to prove his Al-Gore-esque claim that he actually won the last election.

There’s another rematch in Washington’s 8^th Congressional District between Rep. Dave Reichert and Darcy Burner. This one was a real squeaker last time, so it will be interesting to see if Darcy can unseat her Republican rival with a second bite at the apple.

Also look for the Death with Dignity Initiative (1000) to get a lot of hype over the next few weeks. The measure looked to have a lot of support, but opponents are starting to make their voices heard and we could see a nasty fight develop in the weeks before the race.

Oh… and then there’s that little race for the President of the United States too. We’ll be keeping an eye on that for sure.

You could say we’re also passionate in the original sense of the word. Sometimes covering elections is a pain in the you-know-what. Cutting through the rhetoric and baloney, asking the tough questions, and getting to the heart of what’s important isn’t easy. Sometimes it is a little suffering and endurance.

But we’re all too happy to do it here… on your behalf. So I hope you’ll stick with KCTS 9 for some of the best election coverage this fall. We’re hosting a Live Governor’s Debate on October 1st at 7 p.m. And then a Reichert-Burner Debate on October 10th. You can still RSVP for the Reichert-Burner debate. Plus we’ll have an Election Special on November 3rd. And be sure to poke around our new Election site a little bit. We’ll keep you up-to-date with election news, videos, and some cool widgets. My favorite is the PBS/NPR Election Map where you get to play around with the electoral votes of each state and try to predict who will win the Presidential election.

It should be an exciting Fall. We’re passionate about it and hope you are too.