Erin McPike, a reporter covering the presidential race for Real Clear Politics, shared her insight into the 2012 elections during an Oct. 24 forum at Southern.
McPike was the keynote speaker for the forum, “Politics and Apple Pie: A Look Into The 2012 Presidential & Congressional Elections.” The event drew about 225 people into the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, Grand Ballroom.
She had been a frequent guest on MSNBC and FOX offering analyses of national politics. She also had appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, C-Span and BBC, as well as NPR radio. Since the forum, McPike has landed a job as a general assignment correspondent with CNN.
Before working for Real Clear Politics, an online political news and polling publication, McPike was a reporter with National Journal, a weekly political magazine. She also had written articles for Campaigns and Elections, a political insiders’ magazine. She covered former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-Mass.) first presidential bid in 2008 as an embedded reporter with NBC News. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and in political science from the honors program at American University.
She encouraged students to make their voices and opinions about local, state and national politics heard. She also discussed how Ohio was a key state to watch on Election Day.
A panel discussion – moderated by Diane Alverio, publisher of CT Latino News and a former TV journalist — followed McPike’s keynote speech. The panelists included: Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and Political Library at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.; Art Paulson, chairman of the SCSU Political Science Department; Theresa Marchant-Shapiro, SCSU assistant professor of political science; Julian Madison, SCSU associate professor of history, and Lesley DeNardis, associate professor of political science at Sacred Heart University.
Levesque was frequently tapped by national media during the months leading to this year’s New Hampshire primary. The New Hampshire Institute of Politics hosted presidential debates run by ABC, FOX and CNN.
