Chasing Martha

We understand when politicians are busy. We deal with it all the time. After all, talking to journalists can be tedious and repetitive, especially when you’re running for office.

That’s why we wanted to give Attorney General Martha Coakley the benefit of the doubt when her campaign staff was initially stand offish after we approached them about setting up an interview for our story on the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat.

But then we were put off several times by her staff. We suddenly got the feeling Ms. Coakley, a Democrat, didn’t want to speak with us, and the media in general.

At the end of the day, it’s disheartening to think that a potential U.S. Senator for the Bay State would be so reticent to speak to the media. All we asked for was a 15 minute interview. What we got was a canned statement at the last minute. By contrast, we were able to set up interviews with her opponents — Republican Scott Brown and Libertarian Joe Kennedy — relatively easily.

So, if you notice the fact that we have no fresh quotes from Ms. Coakley in our page one story, we apologize. It wasn’t for lack of trying on our part. We can only hope that if elected Ms. Coakley is more generous with her time.