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.
-
The vice president welcomed senators and their families to Tuesday's photo-op ceremony — and he did it in typical Biden fashion. -
The end of the 113th Congress means a lot of goodbyes for retiring members and for those who lost in November. That means, at least for a moment, partisanship took some time off on the Senate floor.
-
Leading Democrats and even some Republicans had kind words Tuesday for the Michigander, who was first elected to the House when Eisenhower was president. His wife was elected to his seat in November.
-
When the next session of Congress begins in January, it will be the first in more than 60 years without a veteran of World War II. It's a generation that dominated the House and Senate for decades. -
The newly elected members of Congress arrived in Washington today to begin orientation for their new jobs.
-
The GOP takeover of the U.S. Senate was the big headline. But it also increased the number of state legislative chambers it controls, and added 3 new governorships, bringing that total to 33.
-
GOP candidate Terri Lynn Land is taking it slow when it comes to public events. Her opponent, Democrat Rep. Gary Peters, leads in polls, but the race is close. -
It seems every time you turn around in the early primary states, you bump into another potential — let's say likely — candidate for president. New Jersey's Chris Christie is one of them. -
Clinton, who says she hasn't yet decided on a 2016 presidential run, was in Iowa Sunday for the first time since she lost the 2008 caucuses to Barack Obama. She attended Sen. Tom Harkin's steak fry. -
For 134 years, politicians have attended a festival in western Kentucky called Fancy Farm. This festival drew a crowd — in part, because Kentucky has a close contest for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
