Adele Ferguson

THIS IS WRITTEN before the first presidential debate because it didn’t mesh with my deadline so I will have to deal with that later, but I look forward to watching it and the slew of other candidate debates in this final month before the election.

I am anxious to see if the news people selected to ask the questions betray their bias. You’ll generally know where they stand by what media they represent.

It was the same here during the 30 years I was an active political writer expected to give readers the who, what, why and wherefores without indicating how I felt about it personally. That changed when I continued writing only an opinion column in 1993. I was a panelist on many occasions as a questioner.

I would sit down one day shortly before the event and write out my questions, trying for at least 15 or 20. You knew you’d never get in more than maybe three questions whether it was an hour or more because politicians on those occasions gave long, long answers to take up time, knowing full well that cut down on what they’d have to answer.

Also, you never knew if one of the other questioners would ask one of your questions before you got around to it, so you had to have a bunch of them for spares.

EMCEES CAN CAUSE you trouble too. I remember one Evans-Rosellini panel where the emcee told us questioners in advance that we got only one shot at a time for a question. No follow-ups. He made that very clear. Absolutely, positively no follow-ups.

Which was bad news because frequently you’d ask a question and the person to whom it was addressed would answer some previously asked other question he felt needed elaboration on his point yet you were forbidden to follow up with “You didn’t answer my question.”

And it was not unusual for the political participants if it was a one on one match for them to be privately asked in advance if they had any suggestion as to who they’d like to have do the asking. On the aforementioned Evans-Rosellini event, I learned later that I was the only newsperson suggested by both sides.

WHEN MY NAME first came up with the Evans people, someone groaned and said, “She’ll chew him up.” “Yeah,” was the response, “but she’ll do the same to Rosellini.” The same conversation took place among the Rosellini planners so I was in. I don’t remember a thing about what we asked or what they answered.

It was the last Gov. Evans versus ex-Gov. Rosellini match-up where Rosellini scathingly referred to Evans several times as Danny Boy and a lot of voters felt it wasn’t just Evans but their governor who was being put down.

It hurt Rosellini badly.

Evans and Rosellini were two of my favorite pols, however.

Evans was one of the long answer types but I couldn’t swear it was to avoid further questions because he liked to deal with the press.

He just couldn’t give a short answer to anything.

We reporters who covered his press conferences used to sit in his conference room waiting for him and making up out loud the answers we expected to hear since he was almost 100 percent predictable.

We were seldom wrong.

Rosellini, on the other hand, was always a bit nervous when being questioned. Not that he didn’t know the answers but some reporters played on that nervousness and would ask questions such as (true case): “How are you going to deal with this problem, Governor? With your usual wishy washy straddling the fence?”

No, not me. He was one of the best governors we ever had. On the current governor’s race, I’ll take McKenna over Inslee any day. I knew Al Rosellini and Jay Inslee is no Al Rosellini.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Bo 69, Hansville, Wa, 98340.)