Ken Rudin, NPR Biography
Political Editor, Washington Desk
Ken Rudin is the political editor for NPR, where he directs campaign coverage for the network. Ken's focus is on all aspects of politics, from the presidential contest -- the primaries, national conventions, and general election -- to the races for the House, Senate, and governor as well. A respected expert on elections and election history, Ken has analyzed and dissected every congressional race in the nation since 1984, with an amazingly high accuracy rate in predicting the outcomes.
For nearly two decades, Ken has been a familiar presence on many national TV news programs, as well as NPR's Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and its newscasts. He was a key player on the NPR team that won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton award for excellence in broadcast journalism in 2002.
In 2004, Ken ran NPR's primary and caucus coverage in Iowa and New Hampshire, the sixth election cycle in which he's been in those early states. He also writes the "Political Junkie" column for NPR.org, which earlier ran for three years online at The Washington Post. The column takes questions on politics and political trivia from readers around the world. He also produced the popular ScuttleButton contest, a weekly campaign button puzzle, for the Post. For the 1997-98 election cycle, he wrote the "Political Graffiti" column for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. From 1979 until 1994, he was the editor and publisher of Politics As Usual, a campaign trivia newsletter.
Ken returned to NPR in 1998, after a three-year absence during which he was the managing editor of the Hotline, a daily political newsletter. From 1983 through 1991, he was at ABC News, where he served as deputy political director and later as the off-air reporter on Capitol Hill covering the House. He first joined NPR as its first political editor in 1991.
A political junkie for over 30 years, Ken's love of politics dates back to the 1966 midterm elections. It was during that time he began collecting campaign buttons -- a collection that now surpasses 70,000 items.
