Sweetland campaign: one day to go

Jon and i spent a few hours Monday afternoon with the Dale Sweetland campaign as they made one last effort to get votes. We caught up with him during lunch in North Syracuse. He told us he had been out at New Process Gear at 6 that morning, and made several stops after that. Then we followed him over to the county office building downtown were he was shaking hands with people as they left work.

He was a really easy person to interview - easy to talk to and very laid back. It makes sense, these are the qualities that a politician needs to get votes, but I was still surprised at how easy it was to talk to him (especially so close to the election).

You could tell that there was that sense that he was the underdog, which of course he was in this race against Dan Maffei. His campaign manager Bill Rapp admitted that they had entered the race late and had a lot less money than their opponent. As Sweetland greeting people passing by, he was saying "I need your vote tomorrow."

For this story, I really tried to minimize my own voice tracks in the story as much as possible. We got some really good interviews and I didn't want such great sound to go to waste. I probably could have only used one bite from Mr. Curran, but there were two things that I really liked that he said, so I decided to put both in. I like how he mentioned that he wanted to know what hte candidate had to say, and who he was as a person. This was of course the theme in my story - Dale trying to get that personal connection before voters cast their ballots. but he also talked about his skepticism of politicians, which has been an important factor in all of the races this year.

This was great preperation for my night of live blogging for the CBS affiliate in Rochester at the Sweetland campaign headquarters Tuesday night. He wasn't allowing media into his private room across the hall from the grand ballroom, so I ended up relying on this information in my post. As the night went on, it became clear that he was not going to make - Maffei kept pulling ahead more and more. He made a brief speech and the end of the night, wishing Maffei all that best.