2018 election interviews — Introduction

Reid Priedhorsky, PCA Secretary, interviewing candidate Sara Scott. Photo by Wendy Caldwell, PCA President

Reid Priedhorsky, PCA Secretary, interviewing candidate Sara Scott. Photo by Wendy Caldwell, PCA President

The Pajarito Conservation Alliance is proud to announce its candidate interview series for the 2018 general election.

We interviewed candidates for County Council and State House District 43 on a variety of topics related to conservation and natural resource issues. We held these conversations outdoors on the east lawn of Fuller Lodge. We will publish the results over the coming days in the order we did the interviews; they were also published in the Los Alamos Daily Post.

We asked each candidate the same eleven questions and audio-recorded the conversation. The transcripts we present are lightly edited. This means, for example, that we removed “um” and “ah”, along with clarification exchanges not useful for voters; if candidates restated something, we picked the more clearly stated version. The result is an informative, conversational expression of the candidate’s personality and views without needing to attend a lengthy in-person event or watch it on video afterward.

CastingWords, a local small business, transcribed the interviews.

Six of the eight county council candidates spoke with us, as did one of the two candidates for District 43. John Bliss (R) did not respond to our requests for an interview. David Izraelevitz (D) declined an interview. He told us that he would do interviews with the media, but not community non-profits. Lisa Shin (R) also declined an interview; she did not respond to an inquiry as to which, if any, organizations she was willing to speak with.

We have not fact checked any of the claims made by candidates.

Los Alamos County Council

State House District 43