Bartle: ‘Missing’ candidate not a mystery

In another apparent attempt to literally create controversy, Kathy Hall, the editor of the Maricopa Monitor, published in her Jan. 25 edition a photo of City Council candidate Marquisha Griffin with a headline of “Candidate found.” The caption states that Griffin “did not appear in a recent City Council candidate lineup done by a local publication.” (Don’t worry about going out and finding the paper, you can see the photo by clicking here.)

That “local publication” was the most recent issue of 85239 The Magazine, in which we published a Q&A segment with the candidates running for City Council (click here to read).

The “story” is that only seven of the eight candidates were featured, with Ms. Griffin “missing.” Here’s the skinny:

We provided the same questions and the same deadlines to each candidate. Ms. Griffin replied to our request and stated that she might not be able to respond in time. I strongly encouraged her to do so stating that it would benefit both the voting public and her campaign to have responses from all the candidates. Ultimately, she opted not to submit responses by the deadline as the other seven did.

What we should – and intended to – have done was to make that clear in the magazine. The following copy was supposed to have been printed at the end of the article: “Marquisha Griffin is also a city council candidate. She declined the opportunity to be included in this article.”

The omission of the above verbiage was unintentional, and I apologize to our readers for any confusion it caused.

And, Kathy, thanks for the additional opportunity to inform our readers of the background behind Ms. Griffin’s omission.

Have an opinion you’d like to share with Maricopa? Please email it and any applicable photos to [email protected] for consideration. For more details, click here.