When your interest turns to local primaries, we have what you need

Considering the ceaseless cacophony on presidential politics in broadcast news and, to a large extent, on social media, it could come as a bit of a surprise to find that there is much more to think about these days than how much longer Tulsi Gabbard can hang on to her hopes of leading the free world.

Indeed, in a little over a week, suburban voters will be faced with helping parties choose candidates for positions from local county auditor to state legislator to congressman to, yes, U.S. president. In addition, many will see referendums on local ballots with the potential to have a direct impact on the quality of life in our communities and significantly affect how much we pay in sales or property taxes.

If you're just now starting to pay close attention, the Daily Herald can help. Our editors and reporters have been working since early December to identify and interview candidates, report their positions on issues people care about and offer insights into their qualifications. You can catch up with most of our reporting at the Elections portion of our website, https://www.dailyherald.com/news/politics/election/. Here, you'll find stories we've published, profiles produced by the candidates themselves, our editorial board endorsements and more.

Permit me, also, to offer a few thoughts on what you'll see.

First, our overriding goal is to provide a source of objective, varied information about candidates and races. While we do publish editorials describing candidates our editorial board prefers, we consider those endorsements one piece of a diverse composite that is most useful considered as a whole rather than through the limited extent of any of its individual parts. Our stories taken from candidate forums or individual interviews provide one type of coverage. The profiles written by the candidates themselves another. Editorials and letters to the editor something even more. You will make your best decision if you reflect on all these elements rather than on any one.

For some readers, it seems to be important to qualify our underlying motives as "liberal" or "conservative," but be careful how you make this assessment. The comments following our endorsement in the Republican primary for 14th congressional district representative included one person's declaration that "the DH leans left - they picked the 'moderate' one" followed by the response that "the DH history of endorsements clearly shows that they lean RIGHT."

We stand by the description we presented in an editorial about our endorsements a couple of weeks ago: "We view the Daily Herald's editorial page voice as neither conservative nor liberal, but mainly one that embraces common sense and cherished common decency. We value independence. We oppose big spending. We espouse empathy, equal opportunity and personal liberty. We revel in foresight and believe it to be the duty of a public servant." If there's a label for such a position, I'll have to leave it to you to choose it.

Note, too, that the endorsements we're making now are for contested primary candidates in each major party. When the party nominees face off against each other in November, we may end up in some races endorsing the opponent of someone we endorsed in the primary, or in others, we may endorse a candidate who wasn't our preference in the primary but won the nomination.

We welcome the chance to share your thoughts about all this and about individual candidates and issues in our letters to the editor column (under 300 words, include your name, home town and a phone number), but keep in mind there's a deadline. We don't publish letters about candidates after the Friday before Election Day - March 13 this time - so if you want to others to consider your thoughts, you should get your letters to us soon. We can't guarantee we'll publish every letter, but we'll get in as many as we can if they arrive early enough.

Meanwhile, thank you for expanding your attention beyond the easy excitement of a Democratic presidential primary. That race is, of course, important, but you'll be making many decisions on March 17 that will have a more immediate and more direct impact on the quality of life we share in the suburbs. We aim to help you make the best decisions you can.

Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is deputy managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald.