BY ROCHELLE ADAMS<\/strong> Voters will get a chance to put several local politicians in the hot seat Thursday during the Kent Chamber of Commerce’s Speed Candidating event.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Set up much like the speed dating process, the event will feature the majority of the state House and Senate candidates interacting with voters within a time limit for each round. During the event, candidates will rotate between tables where groups of nine people will have the chance to hear from each one of them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “That candidates will have five to eight minutes to talk,” said Andrea Keikkala, executive director of the Kent Chamber of Commerce. “The candidate can decide whether they want to do a canned speech for each table or if they want to interact with questions.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n They could also choose to divide the time they have with both a speech and questions, she said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “This is a great, fun, interactive way to meet your candidates and ask the questions,” Keikkala said. “You need to know who you are voting for. It’s a very important process that our country is founded on.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Last year, the Chamber of Commerce conducted a similar event with the Kent City Council candidates, she said. The event went so well, they decided to hold a similar event this year with candidates for state House and Senate seats.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The event will run from 5 to 8 p.m. with a reception catered by Down Home Catering during the first hour. The reception will be free to members and $20 for non-members.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n This will provide an opportunity to connect with the candidates and network with businesses, Keikkala said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The speed candidating portion of the event will begin at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Registration will be open until the day of the event. The maximum number of people that can be accepted is 150.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The event will be held in the Kent Senior Activity Center, 600 E. Smith.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voters will get a chance to put several local politicians in the hot seat Thursday during the Kent Chamber of Commerce’s Speed Candidating event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11976"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
For the Kent Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n