Tri-City Herald candidate interviews are pretty revealing. Check them out before you vote

Hopefully, all those campaign signs dotting the Tri-City landscape have gotten your attention.

Now it’s time to find out who these candidates really are.

The Nov. 8 general election is coming up and it is time to start doing your research. And the Tri-City Herald Editorial Board can help with that.

Making election endorsements is a long newspaper tradition that the Herald has done its best to maintain. The process is not meant to tell people how to vote, but rather to launch the conversation and encourage people to look past political rhetoric and truly study all the people running for office.

To help with this effort, the Herald’s editorial board has interviewed candidates and recorded the interviews, which will be published on our website along with our candidate recommendations.

Every year, without fail, there are people who question why we do this. They say newspapers aren’t supposed to be biased — and that’s true for the newsroom.

But the opinion section is, of course, biased.

That’s why it’s labeled “Opinion” and includes not only the editorial board’s perspective, but political cartoons, national commentary and local thoughts from citizens in our Letters to the Editor.

Anyone wishing to submit a letter about a candidate and the upcoming election can send it to the Herald at letters.tch@tricityherald.com. Letters must be limited to 200 words and must be received by Tuesday, Nov. 1.

We will do our best to publish as many of them online as possible. If you want your letter to make it into our print edition, the sooner your letter hits our in-box, the better.

As for our election recommendations, we encourage readers to consider our analysis as another tool to help them make up their minds.

If you already know who you are going to vote for, that’s terrific.

If not, there are many ways to help you with your homework.

Check out candidate websites, flip through the Voters’ Pamphlet, and watch the upcoming, recorded candidate forums offered by the League of Women Voters of Benton-Franklin Counties.

And of course, read our candidate recommendations and watch our interviews. Our format is unscripted and conversational in nature. While other political debates ask candidates the same question and then move on, our less formal process allows some banter back and forth.

That means, at times, the give-and-take can get heated and contentious. We think that provides the best way to see the contrast between the candidates.

We try not to let candidates get away with political party one-liners. We push for specifics. If someone makes a claim, we expect them to back it up.

Sometimes topics come up that we don’t expect, and that can be particularly revealing.

Another thing that makes our process unique is that we don’t set out to pick winners.

We take a broad, pragmatic view of what is best for the Tri-Cities and Washington state instead of looking solely at political party affiliation.

We’ve heard complaints in the past that we are out of touch with our community — especially if our recommended candidates don’t win.

That isn’t true. We have a very good idea of how this community works and who is spending the most money and who’s got the most backing.

But that’s why our process is so unique and is needed. If you want someone to ask the tough questions and touch on controversial topics, we’re good at that.

We have interviewed most candidates already, and our recommendations will start to be published online and in print in the comings days.

Most should be ready by the time Tri-Citians get their ballots in the mail, but there will be a handful that will hit our website and print editions soon after.

Our process, though, will be complete long before Election Day.

Our editorial board consists of a pool of people who have helped with our election process in the past. They are Retired Herald Publisher Jack Briggs, Retired Herald Executive Editor Ken Robertson, Retired Herald Editorial Writer Matt Taylor, Herald Executive Editor Laurie Williams, Herald Editorial Writer Cecilia Rexus and community representatives Mike Paoli and Martin Valadez.

We don’t always agree, but strive for consensus in our decisions.

So watch for our candidate recommendations, which will be hitting our website this week. Most of all watch the videos and decide for yourself.

Ballots will be arriving before you know it.

This story was originally published October 9, 2022 at 12:34 PM.