News-Record.com

Endorsement season is over and now it’s voting season.

We make it a rule to talk to candidates in every race in which we’re endorsing, preferably in person, but at the very least by phone.

This obviously isn’t easy, especially in a presidential election year. All told, our staff of three full-timers and one part-time editorial writer interviewed more than 100 candidates for the primaries and the general election.

In fact, it seemed for a while as if we’d been interviewing candidates forever (the general election interviews began in June, the primary interviews in the early spring).

Each interview involved prep work, including background research and a questionnaire.

But there is no substitute for talking directly to who’s running. We appreciate nearly every single candidate making time to talk to us, including the candidates for governor, Beverly Perdue and Pat McCrory, who spoke with us three times.

In the case of the gubernatorial candidates and the U.S. Senate candidates, we conducted video interviews (for excerpts, click here) and scroll down to the media player.

For what it’s worth:

All told — counting candidates we interviewed more than once — we interviewed 109 candidates.

That includes interviewing 28 statewide and local candidates for the primaries. (We endorsed only in the primaries for governor, U.S. Senate and Congress and in local races in which the primary determined the outcome.)

We interviewed 81 statewide and local candidates for the general election (including the High Point City Council races), each individually or as a group for roughly an hour, many for more than that.

In 20 partisan races, we endorsed 14 Democrats and six Republicans (City Council, school board and state and local judicial races are all nonpartisan).

Please make your own best choices when you vote Tuesday, if you haven’t already. Here our are picks (to go to individual editorials on each race, click here):

U.S. Senate
Kay Hagan, D

U.S. House of Representatives
6th District: Howard Coble, R
12th District: Mel Watt, D
13th District: Brad Miller, D

Governor
Pat McCrory, R

Lieutenant governor
Walter Dalton, D

Attorney generalRoy Cooper, D

Auditor
Leslie Merritt, R

Agriculture commissioner
Steve Troxler, R

Insurance commissioner
Wayne Goodwin, D

Labor commissioner
Mary Fant Donnan, D

Secretary of state
Elaine Marshall, D

State superintendent
June Atkinson, D

State treasurer
Bill Daughtridge, R

State Senate
District 27: Don Vaughan, D
State House
District 58: Alma Adams, D
State House
District 59: No endorsement

Guilford County commissioner
At-large: Paul Gibson, D, and Larry Proctor, R
District 4: Kirk Perkins, D

N.C. Supreme Court justice
Robert H. (Bob) Edmunds Jr.

N.C. Court of Appeals judges
James A. (Jim) Wynn
Sam J. Ervin IV
Doug McCullough
Linda Stephens
John S. Arrowood

Guilford District Court judges
Susan Burch
Robert Enochs
A. Robinson Hassell
Betty J. Brown
Polly D. Sizemore

Guilford County school board
At-large: Michael McKinney
District 3: Darlene Garrett

Guilford County sales tax
For

Greensboro bonds

Street improvements: Yes

War Memorial Auditorium: Yes

Parks and Recreation: No

Housing: Yes

High Point City Council
At-large: Latimer B. Alexander IV and Mary Lou Andrews Blakeney
Ward 2: Julius Clark
Ward 6:John Faircloth