If you know Mrs Sterk is a wonderful woman as you said, then why in the world would you want to rain on her parade? 

Who cares if  mother of the child who submitted the nomination works for the TN.   I personally wouldn't tell this child that she couldn't vote for a mother she thought was wonderful simply because this mother's daughter works at TN.   I don't understand why family members of people who work at the TN would be excluded anyway... unless you think the TN wanted so badly for this woman to win that they cheated.  lol   

I just think that allowing an employee's mother to win shows an unfair bias to the other wonderful women who were nominated.

 sunshine your point of this blog was to ''rain on Mrs Sterks parade. I agree with sparks that its no big deal............Congrats Mrs Sterk on being Mother of the year. My daughter sings in the choir and I would like to thank you for fighting to save the program from being cut. Thank you and congratulations.................

Congrats to Mrs Sterk - usually employees and family members are discluded from contests.

Gube, you and Sparks are right.... it is no big deal. It's just I feel bad for the other families who nominated their 'moms' and have to wonder if they didn't win because they don't have the right connections. 

And robertcarter is right - usually employees and their families are ineligible. If the Tehachapi News was giving away a car or a million dollars, I bet then you'd care that a family member won.

sunshine, if they were giving away a substantial financial award as a prize in this contest, you can bet they would disallow family members from participating!

Since they aren't, I guess they figured all moms should be eligible.