By Scott White
Woodford Sun Staff
Report for America corps member
As is traditional, we have asked the candidates for each office to respond to three questions we think are on the minds of voters. Since the Sun was a co-sponsor of the Candidate Forums and covered them extensively, we tried to ask questions that were different from those asked at the forums.
Along with allowing each candidate to submit a free candidate announcement and co-sponsoring the Candidate Forums, this Q&A marks the third “free” opportunity the Sun has provided every candidate for local office to speak directly to the voters. Just like the free candidacy announcements, the candidates’ answers to the questions are unedited – we only checked the spelling.
Whether they chose to advertise with the Sun or not was, and is, not relevant to this Q&A. Part of our mission at the Sun is to inform and educate the community – and we believe strongly this is part of that mission.
Each candidate was given 100 words for each question, except for the candidates running for Versailles mayor and county judge-executive, who were given 200 words. A note on that – when we first emailed the candidates, the word count we gave was 200 words, and 400 words for mayor and county judge-executive. However, due to a miscommunication, which was entirely my fault, we did not have enough space for all the candidates’ answers given the section page limit imposed by our printer. Again, this was solely my mistake.
Since the candidates who chose to respond had already sent in their answers, they, and the acting party chairs, were all informed by email late Saturday afternoon, Oct. 24, of the need to resubmit their answers with a deadline of 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Further, if we had the candidate’s cell phone number, they were also informed by text. They were also informed that if we didn’t receive new answers, then we would cut off their answers at the applicable word limit.
We apologize to the candidates for this, recognizing they are all very busy heading into the final week of the election.