Yesterday marked the final installment of my interview with Mark Ellmore, a candidate in this year’s 8th Congressional District Republican primary, where he’s facing Amit Singh. The winner of the June 10th primary will face long time incumbent Rep. Jim Moran (D) this fall. The posted transcripts were the product of more than an hour of conversation with each candidate. Given that this project started a good bit ago, I thought I’d link all of the pieces in one place for those who are doing their research and trying to make up their mind in advance of next Tuesday’s primary.

The Ellmore Interview

  • Part I is here – covering his motivation for running again, and on being a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic district
  • Part II is here – discussing the role of the Federal government in health care, the financial industry, and science research
  • Part III is here – continuing the immigration discussion, and examining his views on the REAL ID Act and the “Security State”
  • Part IV is here – on whether there is tension between keeping the public safe and respecting the Constitution, and the role of the state and federal governments in marriage and civil unions

The Singh Interview

  • Part I is here– introducing himself and his reasons for running, and his political influences
  • Part II is here – expressing his views on Federal spending, the Tyson tunnel debate, and finding energy solutions
  • Part III is here – on Federal disaster relief, privacy rights, government surveillance, immigration, and facing Jim Moran

One thing I’d like to note – when preparing and posting the first piece in this series, I decided to go with a transcription approach to publishing each interview. Not only did I want to give the reader a clear sense of *exactly* how the candidates conveyed their messages, I also wanted to make sure that no one could reasonably say that I – a partisan Democrat – was misstating the views of these Republican candidates in summary form. And really, I think I achieved those goals. What I didn’t take into account at the time, however, was that this approach would be 1) incredibly time consuming, resulting in it taking a lot longer to get out than expected, and 2) occasionally making the candidate sound a little inarticulate. The first issue is my own lesson learned. But I feel a little bad about the second – while a candidate may well not have done the best job of explaining his reasoning for a given position, neither candidate is even close to inarticulate. Both are well spoken and quite capable of delivering their messages in public. Readers may find it worthwhile to check out these two Bearing Drift podcasts, with recorded interviews of Mark Ellmore and Amit Singh, to get a better sense of each candidate’s style.

Update: Please see this post concerning a recent mailer from the Ellmore campaign.