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, debates and general election — to the races for the House, Senate and governor, as well. He has analyzed every congressional race in the nation since 1984.
For nearly two decades, Ken has been a familiar presence on many national TV news programs. He writes the "Political Junkie" blog on NPR.org — an interactive feature that takes questions from readers on campaign history, strategy and trivia. The blog, which earlier ran for three years as a column on the Washington Post Web site, has spawned a "Political Junkie" on-air segment every Wednesday on NPR's Talk of the Nation. Ken was also 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.
Ken also produced the popular ScuttleButton contest, a weekly campaign button puzzle, for the Washington Post, and wrote the "Political Graffiti" column for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
From 1983 through 1991, Ken 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 in 1991, as its first political editor. 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.
A political junkie for many decades, Ken has one of the most extensive collections of campaign buttons in the country — a collection that now surpasses 70,000 items. Ken is a graduate of Pace University in New York.
