With the deadline for filing 2007 general election petitions a couple of weeks away, and party committee nominating process in the rearview mirror, it would not be uncommon to receive a press release or two about union endorsements of a particular candidate at this stage.

But I must admit to being taken aback slightly when our fax machine spit out just that - a candidate endorsement press release - earlier this week. That's because the press release pertained to a candidate seeking a state Legislature seat not this fall, but in 2008.

I was sure there were some readers, perhaps a few politics junkies, who would be interested in the information even at this early stage, so we published it in a news brief (and unfortunately had to print a correction because we should have been more specific about the local union units that had done the endorsing).

I wonder, though, whether candidates and the media are doing a disservice when we spend so much time on elections beyond the current year. Maybe one factor behind low voter turnout is fatigue #- people are just so sick of hearing about these campaigns by the time the actual election rolls around.

Of course the biggest example of this premature election coverage involves the race for the president. Yes, it's natural to speculate about presidential candidates years in advance of the election, but the level of attention and campaigning for the 2008 presidential election has been absurd. It seems like many elected officials are glad-handing in Iowa and New Hampshire every month of every year these days to prepare for a national office run.

I recall writing an editorial for the “Our View” section of The Citizen in 2004 about this issue when we saw a respected polling organization coming out with a 2008 presidential election race forecast #- long before any actual candidates had emerged.

As the example I used to start this column illustrates, the trend is trickling down to more local races. We now have active campaigns launched in local state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives races. Those campaigns started within a few months #- or even weeks #- of the previous elections for those seats.

This trend toward early campaigns is one reason to reconsider the wisdom behind holding state Legislature and U.S. House of Representatives races every two years. It seems under the current systems that politicians are almost always in campaign mode, and rarely in governing mode.

For the news media, though, it boils down to audience interest. I'd be interested to hear from readers on how much interest they have in these races beyond the current election cycle, so we can do the best job possible giving them the appropriate amount of coverage.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net