SPEED CAMPAIGNING: Get to know your City Council and County Commission candidates

Plus, get a look at all the sheriff candidates with links to their biographical profiles.


Brian McMillan interviews Ken Mazzie, a County Commission District 1 candidate, in Speed Campaigning with the Observer.
Brian McMillan interviews Ken Mazzie, a County Commission District 1 candidate, in Speed Campaigning with the Observer.
  • Palm Coast Observer
  • Opinion
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With so many candidates, how do you possibly decide who gets your vote? The best way might be to spend a day with each candidate, but that's not practical. This year, I tried a couple of different approaches. First, I interviewed the candidates in probably the most-talked-about race in Flagler County this year: the race to become the next sheriff. Over the past several months, I spent time one-on-one with each candidate and wrote biographical sketches of each of them. Click on the links below to read their stories:

Sheriff interviews

Democrats

Larry Jones

Jim Manfre (incumbent)

Republicans

Donald Fleming

John Lamb

Jerry O'Gara

Rick Staly

Mark Whisenant

Chris Yates

Speed campaigning

The second approach to election coverage this year is a video series called Speed Campaigning. To keep it manageable, I focused only on the candidates for Palm Coast mayor and City Council, as well as the candidates for Flagler County Board of County Commissioners. In total, there were 15 videos shot over the course of a few weeks. We did our best to convert a conference room into an interview studio, and the candidates were good sports to go along with the format.

The main feature of Speed Campaigning is to put the candidates on the spot and ask them questions which they can answer in the form of a number only. I read them about 10 statements and asked if they would tell me how much they agreed with each statement on a scale of 1 to 10. In the Aug. 4 election guide, their responses are displayed graphically so that it's easy to compare candidates' answers.

The goal is help voters differentiate between candidates in a simple way. For the written responses, please see the printed guide on Aug. 4. Meanwhile, here are the videos:

Palm Coast Mayor

Palm Coast City Council District 1

District 1 candidate Arthur McGovern did not participate in Speed Campaigning.

Palm Coast City Council District 3

County Commission District 1

County Commission District 3

District 3 candidate Jason Michael France did not participate in Speed Campaigning.

County Commission District 5

 

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