Election coverage editorial: One voice, a note, and an apology

Published 4:01 pm Thursday, July 30, 2026

One of the mom-ming catchphrases I use often is, “Different kid, different circumstances!” It happens when there’s an inevitable fight over things being equal: different bedtimes at different ages, different expectations for differently developed brains, different requirements for different goals. Equal and equitable are not the same.

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with all three of our county council candidates for the primary election. I did not have a universal list of questions prepped and did not compare their answers side by side. That wasn’t the purpose of the project. The purpose, as noted in the intro, was to give readers a feeling for what it would be like to talk to these women one-on-one. I did similar profiles for the mayoral election in Friday Harbor last year and they turned out to be really helpful to folks.

I asked each candidate about topics personal to them, their backgrounds, and what stood out to me in the forums or on their websites. I presented potential criticisms to all of them and got their take on them (and touched on those discussions in all three articles).

Reading through my pieces, I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do. The articles feel very honest to the conversations that I had with these candidates. I also fully acknowledge that this was one conversation with one person and one voice, and I know others will have different takes. Our readers are also capable of this thought process. They understand someone wrote this. I trust that they’re able to read something like this and take it as one perspective along with their other information-gathering before the election.

Did you read it? Do you know these women? Did it align with your views of them? Was it totally off? Please write in and share your voice–your perspective. It matters! There are so many voices and one of the reasons I love the local newspaper is that people get to disagree with each other, publicly, and share what they think and why. It’s awesome and it creates accountability at a time when there is very, very little accountability for our words about each other in the wild west of the internet.

That being said–I stand by my pieces. Nothing was taken out of context; they accurately represent my conversations with the candidates and are presented, in my opinion, in a really positive and supportive way.

I will let my critics speak for themselves! I hope you’ll read all the takes and make your own determination from what you see. I will make one note and one apology, though.

Note: Non-partisan races do not mean that reporters should ignore political affiliation. What it DOES mean is that the candidates’ political parties are not printed on the ballot, and everyone is in one primary race. That’s it. That’s what a non-partisan election is. I’d argue that knowing someone’s beliefs, background and values is pretty important for any election! Avoiding or ignoring those things about a candidate and blaming it on a non-partisan election would be, in my opinion, unethical for a reporter.

Apology: As I read through my articles with a fine-toothed-comb after getting some feedback about bias, I felt really good about them. The only exception was ironically something I hadn’t even gotten pushback on (yet)–my comment about one candidate’s curly hair. I have reasons for it (something was said at the forum about big hair, big heart or something? I wasn’t recording and didn’t write it down and couldn’t remember it exactly, so I decided to do a little nod to it in my own descriptions instead) but the truth is that it’s cringey and gross and perpetuating some really disgusting patterns that the media has of degrading candidates who are women by focusing (positively OR negatively) on physical characteristics. It wasn’t okay, I don’t feel good about it, I was wrong to do so, and I’m really sorry to Katherine Bryant Ingman! I will not make this mistake again in my coverage of female politicians.

Happy reading, deciphering, and voting, San Juan County!