The Reporter has received many opinions about our recent story on newly elected Republican State Sen. Andy Hill, who is taking a groundbreaking pill to offset his lung cancer.

He has never smoked cigarettes in his life and leads a healthy life, exercising almost every day. His cancer was caused by a fluke mutation in his left lung.

Some comments have been from local residents, some from partisans and some from elected officials on the other side of the aisle. The majority have been stunningly negative about our coverage.

Some have accused us of politicizing cancer. Some have accused us of being biased against democrats. Some have accused us of not being sensitive to the political climate in Olympia.

The accusation that we have politicized cancer is one that we do not take lightly and is quite heinous. The last time we checked, the election took place in November and our story ran in January. Hill was sworn in at the beginning of the month. Politicizing his cancer would have been running the story prior to the election, not after.

Hill is not up for election again for another four years. We would hope that our elected officials would be more concerned about bridging our state’s debt crisis than campaigning just two months after being elected to office.

It is interesting that some would accuse us of being politically biased over one feature story on a republican. Often times this issue is in the eye of the beholder — if we run a story on a democrat, the republicans claim we are biased and vice versa.

We are confident that our political coverage speaks for itself. The 45th District, which includes parts of Redmond, Kirkland and Sammamish, has not had a republican representative in Olympia in a few years. Every incumbent state legislator from the area was a democrat and every challenger a republican in November. The Reporter strived for unbiased coverage during the campaign, attempting to let readers know who the challengers were and what the incumbents had accomplished during the previous session. The Reporter ran stories on forums, debates and other informational events.

We attempted to profile each race without giving more or less coverage to a certain candidate.

The idea that we are not being sensitive to the political climate in Olympia by running this story on Hill is politically one sided. Hill was elected to represent everyone in the 45th District, not just republicans. Political point scoring in this country is out of control. It has come to a point where our political leaders are more concerned with doing damage to their rivals than doing the job they were elected to do.

Many have brought up the fact that Hill, who is a republican, has the money for health insurance, while his national party has lobbied to repeal recent national health-care legislation that is supposed to open up health insurance for those less fortunate. No matter where you fall on this idea, that Hill has battled cancer and survived is something to be celebrated. That, along with the fact that he was elected to office to represent us is a news story, period.

Some have accused us of using too many political photos with the story. But his being the only challenger from the 45th District to win is half of the story, even though it was not emphasized as much as his battle with cancer in the story.

Democrats should be more worried that they lost the seat, than a feel-good feature on the person holding it.