Don Gonyea
You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.
Gonyea has been covering politics full-time for NPR since the 2000 presidential campaign. That's the year he chronicled a controversial election and the ensuing legal recount battle in Florida that awarded the White House to George W. Bush. Gonyea was named NPR White House Correspondent that year and subsequently covered the entirety of the Bush presidency, from 2001-2008. He was at the White House on the morning of Sept. 11, providing live reports following the evacuation of the building.
As White House correspondent, Gonyea covered the Bush administration's prosecution of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the 2004 campaign, he traveled with both Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. He has served as co-anchor of NPR's election night coverage, and in 2008 Gonyea was the lead reporter covering Barack Obama's presidential campaign for NPR, from the Iowa caucuses to victory night in Chicago.
Gonyea has filed stories from around the globe, including Moscow, Beijing, London, Islamabad, Doha, Budapest, Seoul, San Salvador, and Hanoi. He attended President Bush's first-ever meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Slovenia in 2001, as well as subsequent — and at times testy — meetings between the two leaders in St. Petersburg, Shanghai, and Bratislava. He also covered Obama's first trip overseas as president. During the 2016 election, he traveled extensively with both GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. His coverage of union members and white working class voters in the Midwest also gave early insight into how candidate Trump would tap into economic anxiety to win the presidency.
In 1986, Gonyea got his start at NPR reporting from Michigan on labor unions and the automobile industry. His first public radio job was at station WDET in Detroit. He has spent countless hours on picket lines and in union halls covering strikes at the major US auto companies, along with other labor disputes. Gonyea also reported on the development of alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted-suicide crusade, and the 1999 closing of Detroit's classic Tiger Stadium.
He serves as a fill-in host on NPR news magazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Weekend All Things Considered.
Over the years, Gonyea has contributed to PBS's NewsHour, the BBC, CBC, AP Radio, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He periodically teaches college journalism courses.
Gonyea has won numerous national and state awards for his reporting. He was part of the team that earned NPR a 2000 George Foster Peabody Award for the All Things Considered series "Lost & Found Sound."
A native of Monroe, Michigan, Gonyea is an honors graduate of Michigan State University.
-
It's been 50 years since Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Kennerly, who covered his short-lived run for president, describes what it was like on the ground. -
Blankenship could win West Virginia's GOP Senate primary, despite spending a year in prison after 29 miners died in an explosion at a mine owned by the company he led. Trump isn't backing him. -
Farmers in Nebraska are taking the news of a trade war with China in stride. The tariffs on agricultural exports — particularly soy beans will hurt — but are the voters of this Republican state willing to take the pain and for how long?
-
So far this year colleges and diners in New Hampshire have played host to a special visit from Republicans Jeff Flake and John Kasich, and Democrats Joe Biden and Martin O'Malley. That's early even for a place that is used to seeing a lot of politicians with national aspirations.
-
Texas Republican Pete Sessions is running for reelection in a district that is an island of blue in a sea of red. But Democrats are sensing an opportunity in the area that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
-
Jesse Ball's latest novel pairs a terminally ill man and his adult son, who has Down syndrome, in a mysterious hunt for information. Also, tattoos — they give out a lot of tattoos.
-
Planned Parenthood says it will be a major presence in Senate and gubernatorial races in eight battleground states in this year's midterm elections. It promises to spend record dollars as well. -
President Trump received an enthusiastic greeting from thousands of conservative activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., on Friday. He boasted of his first year accomplishments, but also had a warning about this year's midterm elections, saying complacency could short-circuit his agenda.
-
NRA's executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre addressed the annual gathering of conservatives in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. His message included a call to have arms in schools and an admonishment of those calling for stricter regulations on guns. LaPierre said those people are exploiting the moment for political gain.
-
Many Senate Democrats seeking reelection are in states that Trump carried in 2016. That presents opportunities for the GOP to win and make a takeover effort by Democrats tougher. But there's a problem as the GOP has had trouble recruiting top tier candidates in several important races.
