Over the past several weeks, the four members of the Minnesota Daily’s Editorial Board have interviewed six candidates for state and federal offices. We selected candidates to interview based on polling from several sources, choosing only the top two candidates. Candidates in third-place were not interviewed for endorsements because none were in viable positions that pointed to them being elected.

Interviews for Mohamud Noor, Joe Patiño, Tim Walz and Jen Zielenski were held in person at the Daily’s office. Jeff Johnson was interviewed via videocall. Ilhan Omar was unable to be interviewed, with her campaign citing a busy schedule. Her evaluation was based on previous media coverage, as well as campaign literature available online.

The endorsement decisions for Governor and 5th Congressional District were made on Sunday, and the State District 60B endorsement decision was made on Tuesday. No Daily employees outside the editorial board made or impacted the decisions — a process followed for all editorials the editorial board writes. The separation between the newsroom and editorial board is deep — nothing is communicated between the two entities regarding elections or newsworthy matters.

The four members of the Daily’s editorial board are Kelly Busche, the Daily’s editor-in-chief and a journalism and political science senior; Ray Weishan, the Daily’s editorial and opinions editor and a senior studying political science and the sociology of law, crime and deviance; Ariana Wilson, a senior studying journalism with a media studies minor; and Hailey Almsted, a journalism senior with a minor in public health.

Our goal of the endorsements is to recommend candidates based on fair evaluations. It is our opinion that readers should vote according to our recommendation. We understand everyone won’t agree with our views, so we welcome comments at [email protected].