It’s become a truism of modern politics to say that even local politics have become nationalized.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
The evidence: how our readers have been using our Voter Guide.
There are more than 500 candidates seeking local offices across Southwest and Southside — plus, of course, candidates for Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. We sent questionnaires to all the candidates we could (a few didn’t have email addresses on file with the State Board of Elections; those we tried to call and text, but only a few responded).
Thanks to support from the Knight Election Center and Microsoft, we have created an interactive Voter Guide where readers can see what those candidates had to say and compare them side by side.
We launched this Sept. 3, the day after Labor Day. The results have been surprising, at least to us. Based on the analytics that show who readers are searching for, there’s been relatively modest interest in the federal candidates. Instead, only one of the 20 most-searched-for candidates is a federal candidate: Republican Senate nominee Hung Cao. And even he doesn’t make the top 10. All the rest are candidates for local office.
Three races have dominated the searches: the three-way race for Roanoke mayor, the Roanoke city council race (where seven candidates are seeking three seats) and the three-way race for the Ward 1 city council seat in Lynchburg, historically the most closely contested of the city’s four wards. There’s also been distinct interest in the council races in Martinsville, Salem and Radford. On certain days, there have been spikes of interest for much smaller communities, too.
Over the lifespan of the Voter Guide so far, the two most searched-for candidates are both independents: Roanoke mayoral candidate Stephanie Moon Reynolds, followed closely by Lynchburg Ward 1 candidate Cameron Craddock Howe.
I have no idea what this means for their electoral prospects; all I know is that readers are using this interactive guide and that’s how they’re using it. I can imagine that since those two particular candidates are running as independents, there’s curiosity about who they are. The other candidates in those two races also rank high on the search list, just not quite as high.
I can report that we at Cardinal are using these numbers to help us guide our reporting. We don’t have the resources to cover all 500-plus candidates across Southwest and Southside — that’s one reason for our questionnaire. However, when we’ve seen a lot of search interest in races where we weren’t planning to do stories, we have responded by redirecting resources to report on those campaigns.
I’ll also gently point out that not all candidates have chosen to respond.
In Lynchburg, Roanoke and Salem, all the municipal candidates have responded. In Martinsville and Radford, all but one have. We also have multiple (but not complete) responses from candidates in Bristol and Danville, as well as responses in lots of smaller communities: Alleghany County, Appomattox, Bluefield, Chatham, Clincho, Covington, Crewe, Fincastle, Goshen, Hurt, Marion, Rural Retreat and Stuart.
Many candidates have not responded, though, and that’s why their answers are blank. The most notable exception is Cao. He’s by far the federal candidate our readers are most curious about, but his campaign has not responded to six requests to supply information. I even asked the chairman of the state Republican Party to ask Cao’s campaign to intercede. He said he’d contact the Cao campaign, but we haven’t heard anything back.
We’ve also sent periodic reminders to other candidates who haven’t responded. If you’re a candidate and didn’t get the link (we’ve found instances where it’s gone into spam folders), email us at elections@cardinalnews.org and we’ll resend. Voters are searching!