Candidates are invited for an interview with Kerrville United

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The filing deadline passed on Friday for a spot on the May 2019 ballot for City Council Place 1 and Place 2. Following the city’s official press release naming the four candidates in the race, Kerrville United has begun reaching out to invite them to appear on our platform. We cordially invite each candidate to sit for a video interview so that the voters can be better informed about their choices on this year’s ballot.

Dates and times will be announced after the candidates have a chance to respond to our invitation.

Since 2016, Kerrville United has provided the public with information that is difficult to find in other forms of local media. We focus on local politics — Kerrville city politics, specifically. For the past three years, KU has interviewed candidates, created “explainer” videos, and published scores of articles explaining not only the current news, but also the context, the history, and the explanations to help you understand local news and issues. All of this content is presented free of charge, without paywalls, and is presented on the web and social media so that it’s easily accessed by the entire voting population.

Keeping with the tradition of making local government accessible and understandable to the masses, we now invite each of the four candidates to appear for an interview on our program. The candidates for the May 2019 race include:

Place 1: Gary Cochrane versus George Baroody
Place 2: Kim Clarkson versus Mario Garcia

Candidates for the 2019 City Council Election

Kerrville United invited candidates from both competitive races to appear for an interview in 2018. During that election cycle, only Bill Blackburn and Judy Eychner agreed to be interviewed. Bonnie White and Gary Cooper did not respond to our invitation. We extended the same invitation in 2017, and only Stephen Fine agreed to participate during that election cycle.

Ground Rules

Some candidates are nervous about what to expect when sitting for an interview with us. So we have created these public ground rules and stipulations that we pledge to adhere to when producing these candidate interviews.

  • All four candidates are invited to participate in this interview series. The city has publicly announced that all four candidates mentioned above have filed the proper paperwork for a spot on the ballot, so all four are invited.
  • If additional candidates file as a write-in, they will also be invited to participate. The city’s deadline for a write-in candidacy is February 19.
  • This announcement and invitation is being posted on this website and on our public Facebook page. We will also send email invitations to candidates, if we have their contact information. As of this writing, we have contact information for all candidates except Mr. Garcia, and we have begun reaching out to his family members to gather his contacts.
  • All interviews will be broadcast live and unedited on Kerrville United’s streaming platform(s) which may include Facebook, YouTube, and/or another live streaming service. After the live broadcast, the full, unedited interviews will be available for public viewing “on demand” via Facebook and YouTube.
  • Interview location will be determined by Kerrville United producers based on the suitability of a site for lighting, sound, and other production considerations. All interviews will take place in Kerrville.
  • Interview dates and times will be negotiated individually with each participating candidate, and will be publicly announced as soon as a time and date is agreed upon.
  • This invitation to participate expires on Monday, April 1 at 12:01 AM. If a candidate has not agreed to participate by this deadline, we cannot guarantee a spot.
  • Topics, questions, and conversation topics will not be made available to the candidates in advance. However, KU does offer “coaching” to each candidate, which includes instructions and recommendations on how to prepare for an interview of this type, such as: Review and become familiar with issues that our city faces; prepare to share your resume, background, and relevant experience; a reminder live interviews do not have “retakes” or “re-dos,” so we suggest taking one’s time when answering tough questions; what to wear to look your best on film.
  • All questions and topics will be relevant to a candidate’s potential service as a council member. If a candidate has served in city government previously, either in elected office or on a board or commission, questions may include the candidate’s history and record of public service and voting record.
  • We pledge that there will be no “gotcha” questions, which we define as “off-topic, irrelevant, or personal questions that have no bearing on a candidate’s potential service on city council.” During the interview, if a candidate disagrees with the premise of a question, or feels that the question violates this policy, we encourage them to say so, and explain their reasoning.
  • Each interview will be conducted by Aaron Yates, founder of Kerrville United, and will be in a one-on-one format — one interviewer, one interviewee.
  • We pledge to be respectful of each candidate’s valuable time, and we will keep the interviews concise and on-topic, and will not exceed thirty minutes of live broadcast time.

If any candidate (or any audience member) has any questions about these proposed interviews, please do not hesitate to contact Aaron Yates via email at aaron [at] kerrvillephoto.com, or by sending us a message on Facebook.

We thank the candidates in advance for their consideration of this invitation, as well as for their commitment to public service.