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Meet AP’s Political Reporting Team
More than 500 AP staffers make-up the 2008 team covering the elections and counting the vote. Here is a selection of our news staffers covering the current campaign.
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J.
David Ake
J. David Ake is AP’s assistant chief of bureau for
photos in Washington. He has more than 25 years of photo
experience, including six covering the White House during
the first Bush and Clinton presidencies. Ake joined AP
in 1997 in Chicago as state photo editor. In 2001, he
was named a senior photo editor in New York, where two
years later he was promoted to deputy director of photography.
Ake, who previously worked for Agence France-Press, directed
AP's photo coverage of the Sept. 11 attack on the World
Trade Center, the 2004 presidential campaign and Hurricane
Katrina. He has also covered war and disasters across
the globe and has extensive experience covering premier
sports events. Ake’s work has been honored by the
National Press Photographers Association and The White
House News Photographers Association.
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Charles
Babington
Charles Babington is a political reporter covering the
2008 presidential race for AP. He has spent much of the
last year traveling with and covering Sens. Barack Obama,
John McCain, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. He mostly
writes analysis pieces but also covers breaking news events
and trends, including Obama’s efforts to win over
Clinton supporters. Prior to joining AP in 2007, he worked
for the Washington Post as well as daily papers in North
Carolina and Texas reporting on government and politics.
He has covered five Republican conventions and three Democratic
conventions. Babington has an undergraduate degree in
Islamic History from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
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Donna Cassata
Donna Cassata is AP’s political editor, based in Washington. This is her fourth presidential election, and, in her current position, she is responsible for overseeing coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign and AP's political reporters based in Washington, as well as working with the bureaus in all 50 states. Cassata joined AP in 1983 in Albany, N.Y., and moved to Washington in 1986 where she later covered defense and foreign policy. In 1994, she went to the Congressional Quarterly magazine. She also worked as a copy editor for The Washington Post. In 2003, she returned to AP and was the political editor for the 2004 presidential election and the 2006 congressional election. She is a graduate of Barnard College.
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David
Espo
David Espo is a special correspondent for AP who has covered
every presidential campaign since 1980. Espo, who joined
AP in 1974, moved to Washington in 1977 after stops with
AP in Cheyenne and Denver. He covered Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's
bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980
and was assistant bureau chief in Washington from 1989
to 1993 before returning to reporting. A graduate of Haverford
College, he was awarded the prestigious White House Correspondents
Association Merriman Smith deadline reporting prize for
his 1992 election night writing. He also won the Everett
Dirksen award for distinguished congressional coverage
in 2000.
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Beth
Fouhy
Beth Fouhy is a political reporter covering the 2008 presidential
campaign. Earlier this summer, she completed her assignment
as the AP's lead reporter on the Hillary Clinton presidential
campaign. She also covered the former first lady during
her Senate re-election in New York in 2006. Previously,
Fouhy covered politics and the administration of California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and was one of two lead reporters
covering the historic recall election against California
Gov. Gray Davis. Before joining AP, Fouhy was a political
reporter and producer for CNN for 13 years. She was part
of the political unit, and served as its executive producer
during the 2000 presidential election. A graduate of Oberlin
College, Fouhy was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University
in 2001-2002.
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Ron
Fournier
Ron Fournier is AP’s Washington bureau chief.
He has worked for AP for nearly 20 years, with a one-year
hiatus as editor-in-chief of an issues-driven social
network site. Fournier has covered the White House and
national politics for the AP in Washington since 1993.
He won the Society of Professional Journalists' 2000
Sigma Delta Chi Award for coverage of the 2000 election.
Fournier won the prestigious White House Correspondents
Association Merriman Smith award for his coverage of
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – the judges praised
his reports from inside the evacuated White House, which
were filed as a Secret Service agent requested he leave.
He had won the award twice before: while covering the
Clinton White House and in 1997 for exclusive coverage
of President Clinton's second-term Cabinet selections.
In 2005, he was appointed as a Harvard Fellow at the
Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. Fournier began
his journalism career at the Hot Springs, Ark., Sentinel
Record in 1985. He transferred to the Arkansas Democrat
in 1987 and began covering then Gov. Clinton a year
later.
Recent coverage from Ron
Fournier >
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Jesse
J. Holland
Jesse J. Holland is AP’s labor writer, focusing
on the role of unions in the 2008 election. He joined
AP in 1994 in Columbia, S.C., after interning at AP and
The New York Times. In 1999, he transferred to the Albany,
N.Y., bureau, and a year later he began working in Washington.
A graduate of the University of Mississippi, he was editor
of the campus newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. He also
interned for The Oxford Eagle, in Oxford, Miss.; The Birmingham
Post-Herald, Birmingham, Ala.; and Meredith Corp.
in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1996, his coverage of the Susan
Smith trial and other stories earned him APME’s
John L. Dougherty Award, which recognizes an outstanding
AP reporter with less than three years experience. He
is the author of the book, "Black Men Built The Capitol:
Discovering African American History In and Around Washington,
D.C."
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Jim
Kuhnhenn
Jim Kuhnhenn is a national political reporter for AP covering
money and the media. His focus in 2008 is on fundraising
and corporate influence at the political conventions,
as well as advertising by the campaigns and outside groups.
Kuhnhenn, who joined AP in 2006, covered his first presidential campaign in 1980. Most recently, he worked at Knight
Ridder, where he covered Congress and politics in the
2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. A graduate of Penn
State University, he has received the Keystone Award from
the Pennsylvania Newspaper Associated and shared a James
K. Batten award for community journalism while at the
Kansas City Star.
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Stephen
Ohlemacher
Stephen Ohlemacher has spent the last year overseeing
AP’s delegate count, ensuring AP has the latest,
most accurate information. He is also focusing on the
role Hillary Clinton’s delegates are playing at
the Democratic National Convention and the role they will
play during the election. Ohlemacher joined AP in 2005
from The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer where he covered the
2000 and 2004 presidential elections from a state perspective.
A graduate of the Ohio State University, he holds a master’s
degree in journalism from Columbia University. He also
attended Columbia as a Knight-Bagehot fellow in business
journalism. In 1997, he was part of a team of journalists
at The Hartford Courant that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize
for breaking news. Most recently, he won a 2008 Oliver
S. Gramling Achievement Award, an AP staff recognition
honor, for an in-house delegate analysis that ultimately
allowed AP to declare Obama the presumptive Democratic
nominee eight hours before any competitor – and
made AP’s delegate count the standard among media
organizations.
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Walter
R. Mears
Walter R. Mears retired from AP in 2001 as vice president
and Washington columnist. During his 45-year AP career,
Mears won a Pulitzer Prize and covered every presidential
campaign and election from 1964 to 2001. Mears joined
AP in Boston in 1955 while a student at Middlebury College
in Vermont. He was AP’s first Montpelier, Vt., correspondent
before transferring to Washington in 1961. In Washington,
Mears served as a special correspondent, chief political
writer, chief of bureau and chief of the Senate writing
staff. He won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting
for coverage of the 1976 presidential campaign and election.
In 1978, he was named an AP vice president. Mears served
as executive editor of AP from 1984 to 1989 before returning
to the Washington bureau. He is the author of “Deadlines
Past: Forty Years of Presidential Campaigning, A Reporter’s
Story” and the co-author of “The News Business,”
and “The New News Business,” with former NBC
anchor John Chancellor.
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Julie
Pace
Julie Pace is AP’s national politics multimedia
reporter/ producer. She is responsible for coordinating
AP’s premium political coverage for online video,
which includes behind-the-scenes campaign photography
and a daily “Race Rundown,” which previews
daily campaign events. Prior to joining AP in 2007, Pace
was as a multimedia reporter in Tampa, Fla., working for
The Tampa Tribune, WFLA, and TBO.com. She also previously
worked as a reporter for eTV, a television station in
South Africa, and as a freelancer in Zambia. Pace holds
a degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School
of Journalism.
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Nedra
Pickler
Nedra Pickler is AP’s lead political reporter covering
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. In the past
year, she has crisscrossed the country with Obama as AP
followed his victory in the presidential primaries to
the Democratic convention. She also broke the story that
John Edwards was quitting his campaign. This
is her second presidential campaign; in 2004, she spent
10 months on Sen. John Kerry’s campaign plane covering
his race for the presidency. Pickler joined AP in 1998
in the Detroit bureau. She later covered the statehouse
in Lansing before coming to Washington, where she has
been the past eight years. A graduate of Michigan State
University, Pickler won the APME John L. Dougherty Award,
which recognizes an outstanding AP reporter with less
than three years experience.
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Tom
Raum
Tom Raum has been covering presidential campaigns for
AP since 1976. In the 2008 race, he has covered Barack
Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and the other presidential
hopefuls on the campaign trail and in more lengthy analysis
pieces. He joined AP in 1971 and worked for two years
in Tallahassee, Fla., before transferring to Washington.
In Washington, he held numerous positions, including chief
congressional correspondent, AP economics writer and White
House reporter. A graduate of Lehigh University, Raum
previously worked at the Tampa (Fla.) Times as a political
columnist.
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Liz
Sidoti
Liz Sidoti covers the 2008 presidential race for AP and
has spent much of the past two years on the campaign trail.
She reports on both John McCain and Barack Obama. She has spent her entire journalism career
working for AP, with the last five years in Washington,
where she primarily covered national politics. An Ohio
native, Sidoti joined AP in 1999 in Cincinnati upon graduating
from Ohio University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
A few months later, she transferred to Columbus to cover
the Ohio Statehouse. In 2003, she joined the AP's Washington
bureau and the national political team covering the next
year's presidential race. She also did a stint covering
Congress, including the 2006 mid-term elections, before
returning to the presidential politics beat for 2008.
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Jesse
Washington
Jesse Washington is AP’s national writer for race
and ethnicity. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he is focusing on the ramifications of the possibility that Barack Obama could become the nation’s first black president. Previously,
Washington was AP's entertainment editor, supervising
an expanding team of journalists covering film, music,
television, theater, books, pop culture and celebrities.
Before that he was managing editor of Vibe magazine and
founding editor-in-chief of Blaze, a magazine focusing
on hip-hop culture. His first novel, "Black Will
Shoot," was published this year. Washington joined
AP in Detroit in 1992 and transferred to its national
editing desk in New York the next year. He also served
as assistant bureau chief in New York City.
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Cal
Woodward
Cal Woodward is an enterprise writer in AP’s Washington bureau, where he has worked since 1994. He has covered presidential elections for AP since 1996, and now writes about presidential campaign issues, trends and personalities. In 2007, he co-authored a chapter about AP’s White House reporters for a new history about the company: BREAKING NEWS: How the Associated Press has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else.” Woodward began his news career in Canada, reporting for Canadian Press in Halifax, Nova Scotia, then in New York and Washington, before joining AP. He is also the co-author of a history of the Washington bureau, published in 1998, “Washington (AP): Witness to Power and Politics.”
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