Dear readers and voters, we are two months away from deciding who to elect to lead our governments for the next few years.
We will be publishing interviews with state, legislative and congressional candidates who take the time to visit Sedona and the Verde Valley. All to often state candidates request news coverage from our valued publication remotely but don’t bother to set foot in the Verde Valley and meet with you, their actual voters. That doesn’t fly with us; our newspaper’s political affiliation is neither liberal nor conservative, but we are fiercely hyperlocal, regardless of partisanship and have been for more than 50 years.
We trust our readers and residents know better how to manage local government issues and that our residents’ views matter most. Thus, if these candidates feel that you, their voters, are worth meeting with in person and schedule a public event with voters, we’ll gladly interview them while they’re here and publish that story.
Even more locally, in keeping with our standard procedure for Sedona City Council elections, we are running candidate profiles and essays prior to the Aug. 2 election. We take our role as the voice of the Sedona community very seriously and have honed a process that we and candidates, both those elected and also-rans, believe to be as fair as possible given the nuances of representative democracy.
Two candidates appear every Friday. First are six candidates who are running for three open City Council seats: Melissa Dunn and Brain Fultz appear today, Friday, June 3; followed by Pete Furman and Scott Moffatt on Friday, June 10, then Jennifer Strait and Jon “J.T.” Thompson on Friday, June 17. Then we publish the four mayoral candidates: Samaire Armstrong and Kurt Gehlbach on Friday, June 24; then Scott Jablow and Sandy Moriarty on Friday, July 1.
On council, one seat is being vacated by Councilman Tom Lamkin, one seat vacated by Jablow, who is running for mayor, and the third is Thompson’s, who is running for re-election. The four mayoral candidates are vying for the seat occupied by Moriarty, the incumbent.
The profiles conclude just days before early ballots get mailed out around Tuesday, July 5, and voters can start deciding who to elect.
As Sedona’s only local media outlet, we have an obligation to dutifully serve readers and voters with a fair process to present our potential leaders to the public. Journalist Juliana Walter sent all the candidates a list of questions and asked candidates to keep answers focused and succinct. While one candidate may answer one question in 15 words and another may take 200, the entire responses to all the questions from the candidates have been edited to roughly the same length.
On the inside of today’s newspaper — Page 5A — candidate essays will appear. They are from the same candidates on the front page. These essays allow candidates to address you, the voters, in their own words. We gave each candidate a word limit of 750. They may go into depth about questions Walter asked, present a topic close to their heart, state a vision about elected office or a new policy or simply voice their views on what Sedona should be.
In the slam poetry world from which I come, we have a saying — “you will know poets by their words” — i.e., you cannot truly know a poet until to battle them in a slam bout, when both are facing the same constraints, and see what they say and how they say it.
So it is with candidates. When they have free rein to speak in their own words on any topic, you can see how their mind works, how they decide which topics to address, form logical arguments, make word choices and present rhetorical strategies to give some indication about how they will legislate and debate other council members if elected to office.
We encourage residents to place political ads stating who they support and why. If one or several candidates move you, contact our Advertising Department at (928) 282-7795 Ext. 114 or klarson@larsonnewspapers.com to run a political ad supporting a candidate and urging others to do the same.
As the internet voice of Sedona, we will post all the essays and interview questions on our website, redrocknews.com, after each block concludes — council candidates after June 17, mayoral candidates after July 1. We will also run a follow-up prior to the August primary election so voters can be reminded of each candidate and their key positions prior to in-person voting on Election Day.
Forum questions, speaking engagements and meet-and-greets give voters insight into candidates issues, so we will cover public forums and debates which all candidates have been invited.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
