I'm Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder. On February 5, Super Tuesday, I reported on the campaign trail from Tennessee.
Reporting can be unpredictable at times. Take early February when
tornadoes and Super Tuesday election returns competed for TV news time.
My assignment was to cover Super Tuesday in Tennessee. Super Tuesday
was the biggest primary voting day in the 2008 presidential election.
Tennessee is one of 22 states that voted on February 5. Scholastic News
Kid Reporters were visiting polling places all over the nation
interviewing voters and reporting on returns.
I got up extra early that day so I could interview some of the first
voters. I was planning to return later in the day just before the polls
closed. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out exactly how I thought it
would.
At around 4:30 p.m., I heard that serious weather was heading for
Nashville. I decided to hit the polls earlier than planned, before
closing time. I managed to talk to a few people waiting in line to vote
before I had to leave. Once home, I faced a new challenge: tornado
warnings!
I needed to finish the article fast, but the election returns wouldn’t
be in for hours. The polls weren’t closed and a tornado was heading
right for my home in Nashville! At 7 p.m., I turned on the television
to find out the results at the polls, but instead all I found was news
about the nearby storm. It wouldn’t be long before I would have to get
in the basement with my family for safety.
I quickly wrote a story based on early predictions and sent it to my
editor before heading down to the basement to spend the night. I woke
up to find that although my house was OK, my article wasn’t. Turns
out, those early predictions were wrong! Former Arkansas Governor Mike
Huckabee won Tennessee despite an early lead in the polls by Arizona
Senator John McCain.
The moral of this story is that this election season is completely unpredictable—kind of like tornado season.
Photo: Aaron Broder
