Kick-off season
Editorial

We have now passed the Labor Day weekend of the year before the upcoming presidential primary season.

We are four full months away from the New Hampshire primary and our airwaves are becoming more and more populated with political commercials. Some of these are from the candidates including our former Gov. Mitt Romney. Other commercials are from the special interest groups like the American Association of Retired People. And some are from companies just playing on the political season, such a Swiffer.

Over the next six months before we head to the polls for the Massachusetts primary, we need to be care not to let ourselves get sick of the political pandering. At this point we don't know how many candidates will be on either the Republican or the Democratic ballots, but every candidate and every special interest group will be trying to get our attention more now that the primary season has "officially" started.

We all have a responsibility to in some ways to tune out all of the voices and the over-coverage, both in free media and in commercial airtime everyone will buy. We have to focus on the candidates, their positions and their records. We have to decide what is important to us and who we want to represent us to the world on these issues.

The field of contestants in this game we call national politics will be smaller by the time we get to vote in a primary election on March 4. We may be so sick of listening to the political wrangling by that point many of us will no longer even want to care by the time November 2008 appears.

So this is a reminder as the political primary season picks up not to get caught up in the hoopla, but to do your own research and to remember that each vote maters.