Wrapping Up The Candidate Analysis

Over the past few days I have undertaken the task of analyzing each of the candidates for Maine’s Governor in the upcoming November election. Three of the four that I asked to participate did. The exception was green party candidate Patricia LaMarche. Incumbent democrat Governor John Baldacci, republican Chandler Woodcock and independent Barbara Merrill all joined in and answered the six questions I posed to them.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of them for taking the time out of busy schedules to be a part of this event.

The six questions analyzed by me can be found at these six links – question one, question two, question three, question four, question five and question six.

Each hopeful was provided an opportunity to make a general statement about their campaign. Two of the three chose to do that. Below are their comments followed by an overview by me of the interview.

Chandler Woodcock’s general statement:

I tru()ly appreciate the opportunity to answer the questions and wish to again thank you. I have been hunting and fishing in this state for nearly 50 years and love the outdoors. It generates $1 billion/year for us and needs to be better appreciated by govern(m)ent for its important role and significant heritage.

Barbara Merrill’s statement:

In some ways I think hunting and fishing are the canary in the cage for traditional Maine values.  When large groups of our citizens and the people they elect to state office don’t appreciate the importance of these traditional outdoor activities, then all aspects of traditional Maine are at risk.  So I look forward to working with you on an ongoing basis to improve the general level of support all across Maine.

I appreciate their statements and wish them the best in their upcoming elections.

I would first like to share with readers the difficulties in undertaking an online interview. Conducting an online interview first runs into difficulties because neither the participants nor I can be witness to voice influction and body language. We are all subject to only text.

Another difficult aspect is in not being able to clarify or ask immediate follow-up questions. With this, I was left at times to make assumptions, draw conclusions and ask more questions.

I’ve not conducted many online inteviews and therefore the three candidates were asked to respond to the questions as I worded them. I would have imagined that had we been face to face, they too would have wanted some clarification on some of the information asked. With that said, I can say that perhaps the questions I chose to ask were not the most pressing issues in your perspective of things. I made an attempt to put together six that I thought covered issues important to most readers.

I hope from this that I learned how better to ask questions in this format and what I would do next time to improve.

It is a daunting task to take responses in text only from the candidates and attempt to analyze where each candidate is coming from without them being here to defend themselves. I may at times have come across as being hard on the candidates. My attempt was to incite participation from readers, ask questions, clarify some facts and state my own position on the issues.

I did invite the candidates to participate in a dialogue through this blog but none chose to nor did too many of my readers. Those who did, I thank you.

I need to clarify that the positions I took on issues within the six questions were strictly my own and not necessarily those of Maine Hunting Today or U.S. Hunting Today.

As the election draws closer in the coming months, I will refresh these articles for readers to review and for newcomers to see for the first time. For those interested, links have been placed on the home page of the Black Bear Blog and under the news headlines at Maine Hunting Today.

Thank you to all again.

Tom Remington