2010 Congressional Interviews (Pre-Primary)

Over at Examiner.com, I have been conducting, transcribing, and posting a series of interviews with candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia.

My original aim was to interview each of the seven candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the Fifth Congressional District.  I was able to accomplish that over two days, April 10 (the Charlottesville GOP mass meeting) and May 1 (the Fifth District GOP convention at Hampden-Sydney College).  It took some time, however, to transcribe the interviews and put them into news article form.  (Believe it or not, some candidates require substantial editing to make their oral disquisitions readable as printed text.)

In addition, I was able to catch up with candidates from the First, Third, Seventh, and Eighth districts -- including one Democrat and one independent.

After each interview, I was able to snap a photograph of the candidates.  I think that the poses they made for the camera are sometimes as revealing as the answers they gave to my questions.

With each of the Republican candidates, I asked a version of three basic questions:

(1) Assuming you win the primary, what will be the top three issues that you'll emphasize during the general election campaign?

(2) Since you face x opponents in the primary, how will you unify the party after the primary to move forward to November?

(3) A related question:  the Republican party and conservative movement are made up of several elements, such as social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and Club for Growth types.  How do you bring all those elements together to work on a common project or walk along a common path?

Many of the answers I received were similar.  Some were different, distinctive, and unexpected.  None of my questions elicited a "gotcha" reply.  (No macacas here, if you're looking for them.)  I do think, however, that each candidate was able to present his or her personality and unique characteristics in just a few hundred words.

While I hope to have an opportunity to conduct a similar interview with Tom Perriello during the general election campaign (he is unopposed for his party's nomination), here, for the moment, are the interviews with the seven Republican candidates in Virginia's Fifth Congressional District:

Ken Boyd

Jim McKelvey

Laurence Verga


Mike McPadden

Robert Hurt

Ron Ferrin

Feda Morton

The candidates from other districts are these:

James Quigley (Libertarian, Third)

Matthew Berry (Republican, Eighth)

Krystal Ball (Democrat, First)

Catherine Crabill (Republican, First)

Floyd Bayne (Independent, Seventh)

All of these articles, plus others related to the 2010 election season, can be found under the general heading of "Charlottesville Elections 2010" on Examiner.com. Articles on other topics can be found on my page as "Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner."

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