craigdailypress.com

I fully admit to being a political junkie.

Recently, I wrote a bonus column about how much journalists love elections.

Thankfully, we're not the only ones.

Moffat County followed a national trend last Tuesday while bucking another one. We had record voter turnout (thank you to everyone who voted!), but we overwhelmingly chose Sen. John McCain.

The next day, amazing election stories were everywhere: long lines, record turnout, historic aspects of the results, etc. It should have been another day I cherished.

But, for me, the day after the election was kinda boring.

That's why, instead of writing about how historic this election was or how the results could or will affect our country, state, county or city, I want to share my election night story.

Early morning

My day started with the weekly managers' meeting, where we discussed usual business, but also the election. (With three of four of us supporting one candidate, our tiny poll was nearly representative of the county!)

After the meeting, I was in the newsroom, posting our first election content on craigdailypress.com.

We had a really ambitious coverage plan, which started bright and early for reporters Bridget Manley - at Centennial Mall at 7 a.m. - and John Vandelinder - in Maybell. Bridget filed the first report and photos, which I posted online. It was exciting to hear her talk about the flood of people and predictions of record turnout. Then, John came back from Maybell with a story and photo poll.

I constantly was refreshing news Web sites, including: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS 4, 9News, denverpost.com, rockymountainnews.com and several more.

I also had browser tabs for clerk and recorder sites from Moffat, Rio Blanco, Garfield, Routt, Grand and Jackson counties, which stayed open.

Lunchtime and afternoon

By noon, we had several updates online, and I was working with our news editor in Steamboat Springs on our evening plan. Did I mention it was ambitious?

Our last deadline already was moved back an hour, but we still were nervous: We were worried about whether we would have the results in time; we didn't know if we would have a president yet Tuesday night; and we weren't sure if the multi-county-race winners would be declared in time.

But, we decided, the key was to get everything else done as early as possible.

John and photographer Hans Hallgren also put together a video question-and-answer on the fly, and we posted it to our Web site. (That was a triumph for me, figuring out how to put the link to it on our home page.)

In the meantime, reporter Collin Smith covered the sentencing of a local rancher convicted of poaching elk.

We finished early everything we could and sent it off to Steamboat.

After that, it was a waiting game.

5 p.m. update

With our Internet updates posted and our early stories and photos sent, my reporters and photographer headed back into the field - Centennial Mall and the Moffat County Courthouse - to wait for local polls to close and the results.

When polls closed in a few eastern states, the waiting game turned into a watching game for me. I was with Bryce Jacobson in his office, flipping from Web site to Web site to see which news outlet was calling which state for either presidential candidate. All the while, he and I were: discussing how the heck they were calling states with only tiny portions of the votes counted; arguing about how it would turn out; joking about which news outlet was calling which state; and noting how close things were - just two political junkies at their junkie-est.

Polls close here

Before 7 p.m. came, I was back in my office, getting ready for the flood that was to come, and Bryce headed down to the courthouse. I knew deadlines would start hitting us before we knew it.

I still was watching the news Web sites, but I also was watching the county Web sites for any results from our surrounding counties.

We also found out that a snowstorm was going to delay results from Maybell and Dinosaur vote centers, so we had to figure out how to work around that, too.

We weren't sure what our front-page photo was going to be, only that it would be a local reaction shot.

I sent Hans out to the Moffat County Democrats' watch party. With the way things were looking, I had high hopes he would get a photo there that we could use on front - and he didn't let me down.

Deadline race is on

He and Collin came back about 8:15 p.m., and Collin busted out his polls-closing story, and Hans uploaded photos.

Collin also reported on the Moffat County Commission, state Senate District 8 and state House District races.

And Bridget and Bryce helped compile results from other counties in our multi-county races.

All the while, Assistant Editor Joshua Roberts was at the courthouse, waiting for the results. He was working double duty, reporting local results to The Associated Press. Josh also put together stories about our district attorney race and the presidential vote in Moffat County, with Democratic and Republican reactions gathered by Collin.

At the end, we scraped against our deadline, but it all worked out. And that's how the paper you found in front of your house or in a rack on Nov. 5 came to be.

National and local

Earlier in the evening, specifically at 9 p.m. in Craig, the polls closed on the West Coast, and CNN declared Sen. Barack Obama to be the projected winner. I was in shock. We still had no idea about several of our local races, but we had a new president.

That continued to be the case throughout the night, as we weren't able to get a story about the official new district attorney - Elizabeth Oldham or Tammy Stewart - because Grand County's results were not released, and the overall race was fairly close.

About 1 a.m., Bryce finally stopped checking the Grand County Clerk and Recorder's Web site and decided to go home. I waited another 45 minutes at the office before heading home.

But I went home and turned on the TV and watched some of the nine hours of election coverage that I had recorded on my DVR, including the presidential concession and acceptance speeches.

I am, after all, a political junkie.