This is in the nature of a small confession. Until this past Tuesday, I have never, to my best recollection, voted in a primary. So I guess this time offered the most exciting possibilities that drew me to the voting booth. And for that injection of enthusiasm into what has traditionally been an overlong and boring presidential election process, I guess that we ought to thank Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They have presented us with some real options instead of the usual Tweedledum and Tweedledee candidates.

Whatever happens from this point on, New York state has uncharacteristically played a significant part in this election. Until April, by the time we here have our primaries, the dust has usually cleared and our outcomes haven’t particularly registered on the political Richter scale. This time was different.

Yes, advance polling had projected Trump and Hillary Clinton victories. But the wide margin for both was a major additional factor. With just a few precincts to report, Trump had won 60 percent of the vote in a three-way race; and Clinton won 58 percent against Sanders, holding together a wide coalition of voters more typical of the national voter profile. Some other interesting points: John Kasich came in a solid second with 25 percent; the only district Trump lost was Manhattan, his home, which went to Kasich; and Ted Cruz was a distant third which was predictable, if for no other reason than after his “New York values” comment earlier in the contest.

I have often thought that the race for president goes on far too long but I read an article recently in The New York Times that gave me a different perspective. The writer suggested that the contest could be compared to a job interview, in this case the most powerful job in the world, and that we were the employers, which as voters I guess we are.

So in this long interviewing process, we get a chance to see how the candidates react when in friendly domains, when under pressure from unfriendly spectators and when they are in an adversarial role, attacking each other. These are all simulations of the job they are after, and their reactions are revealing. We also get to judge how well they manage a complex campaign over a considerable period of time. Few would disagree that the stark contrast between the campaigns of Obama and Clinton contributed to Clinton’s loss in 2008. Besides being president and commander in chief, the winner had darn well be a good manager. Although he won the election in 1976 against Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter will go down in history as one of the U.S. presidents’ worst managers who tried in vain to micromanage throughout his four years. Ronald Reagan handily beat him in 1980 and could be known as the delegator in chief for the way he managed his administration until he became ill.

Trump and Clinton, if they wind up going head-to-head in November, also offer stark contrasts. Regardless of whom one intends to vote for, few would deny that Clinton has the most experience in government and Trump has the least. This is the great advantage for Clinton and paradoxically the great advantage for Trump. People who are dissatisfied with the direction our country is headed — or their own lives — or look at government in Washington as abdication of responsibility, see Trump as an unsullied outsider capable of shaking out the deadwood and turning things around. He continually refers to himself as a “deal maker,” capable of making the United States great again. And Russian President Putin likes him, another first for an American presidential election.

Clinton has the problem of being “old goods,” familiar as the paintings on the wall that go unappreciated with time. And for various reasons, people profess not to like her, as if that is a criterion for the highest office. Do they have to like her? In fact I have met her half-a-dozen times and unlike the public face she presents from the podium, she struck me as not only likeable but also delightful and quite human. On the other hand, do people trust her to reflect their values and do the right thing when under great stress? That is the biggest voter question, and in New York state Tuesday the answer came back a resounding “yes.”

Stay tuned.

Saratoga Springs had snow on the ground when I arrived at dusk for the start of the New York Press Association convention a week ago Wednesday. Coming from Long Island, where daffodils are brightly nodding at passersby, forsythia are beacons of the coming spring and buds are finally on the tips of skeletal tree limbs, I had left the world of winter behind. So it was a bit of a shock to see how far we at home had advanced.

My first workshop in the morning was a valuable one dealing with good organizational management. What’s that, you might ask? To me that means working in a corporate or nonprofit group of any kind, productively, happily and successfully. It means optimizing resources and achieving a group’s lofty goals in a way that is most satisfying both to members of the group and to its clientele. It also means innovating to embrace future change even while preserving the core of the business.

What has that to do with us at the newspapers? Stay with me and I will reveal a nice surprise.

In the past, in what we now call “the old industrial age,” the manner in which organizations ran was hierarchical, meaning from the top down in a vertical fashion. You’ve undoubtedly seen such graphics depicting the CEO at the top, followed below by the next row of managers, with further rows below them. Those workers in each row reported to the manager immediately above them, with final decisions coming down from above. That was how the company managed its decision-making and workflow.

Today the model for better management has dramatically changed. Corporate flow charts have flattened and been transformed into more of a web than a ladder. The group chart is horizontal rather than vertical, perhaps influenced by the internet. Employees at all levels of a company or group are vested in the decision-making process, to the greater success and satisfaction of personnel making the product or performing the service and its quality for the end user.

That is optimal organizational management today, led by Silicon Valley high technology companies in the larger corporate world, who took away titles, reserved parking places and physical partitions, and created the sense of equal participation and valued input that constantly push toward change while still maintaining the traditional business.

So now for the nice surprise.

We at Times Beacon Record News Media, celebrating our 40th anniversary this month, have always run the business as a web rather than a ladder. Why? Because the people who have worked here, a great many of whom are still with us, have been respected for their talent and commitment and encouraged to offer their best ideas, concerns and input. We have been very lucky with the type of person who chooses to work with us, and we are most appreciative of our good fortune in that regard.

Now comes the best part. While we have had many talented men working here, and we still do, we are nonetheless an organization with a majority of women. And I learned in business school, many years ago, that webs rather than ladders are instinctively more typical of women. Along with the networking concept go ideas like job sharing in order to combine work and also manage sick children, flexible hours, working at home and being innovative in order to do more in less time. The final products, which is what our work is about, have been stellar.

In the early years, when a couple of experienced older men had joined our sales team, they were deeply puzzled by our management style. “Just tell us what you want us to do, and we’ll go out and do it,” they urged more than once at our ideas-generating meetings. They came from the old school in believing that dictatorship is the most efficient form of management, as I suppose it is.

By the time I left Saratoga Springs Sunday morning, the snow had disappeared. I could hear a bird singing through my open car window, and against the blue sky, I believe I caught sight of a few tiny buds on trees limbs. Sometimes it just takes a little extra time for different parts of the world to catch up.

Earlier this week, there was a news report on the radio that 50 percent of hotel rooms in London and Paris were empty. Individuals, tour groups, even business travelers had canceled their reservations and were staying home. The statistics made me sad.

When I was graduating from high school in 1958, I passionately wanted to travel to some distant shores and see what life in those countries was all about. I had read about Paris in my French class, had translated Julius Caesar’s “The Gallic Wars” from the original Latin, studied the rise and growth of democracy and personal freedoms in my history class, and tried to understand political ideas like communism and socialism in political science class. Now I wanted to see these concepts in action in the real world. My mother was adamant: “You can travel to Europe with your husband. Not before!”

Sure enough, the first time I crossed the Atlantic, I sat beside my husband on an eight-day guided tour of London. How fascinating and instructional it all was. How much knowledge I amassed by the time I returned. How much more I understood. I was hooked on travel for the rest of my life.

It was said then that we were citizens of our countries, but our children and grandchildren would be citizens of the world. And that prediction has come true. My grandchildren have already been to three different continents. The impressions they brought back have made them smarter, better and more compassionate people, and they have not yet even reached their majority.

But what about today? Are the risks worth the rewards? We know there is a lot in the news these days to make us angry and fearful. Maybe those two emotions are really the same. Almost every day there are reports of carnage of innocent people across the globe triggered by terrorists who want to make a political or sectarian statement, or are looking for revenge. The death and maiming of those victims, whose only misstep was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is a modern tragedy — a game of Russian roulette. The more gruesome the killings, the more notice their assailants get. Children killed, sure. People slaughtered as they are kneeling in prayer, yes. Aid workers risking their lives with humanitarian motives … kill them. The ultimate idea is to spread a tsunami of fear and isolation.

When people stop traveling, the terrorists know their brutal efforts are working. In a world that has become wonderfully global — with citizens of different countries interacting and coming to understand the customs and religions of each other, with economies benefiting from tourist spending that raises standards of living — travel is a natural target for those who would bomb us back into the Stone Age. And to what end? The purpose of the killers is power, the power to better control the masses, to attract followers by using corrupted ideology and perverted religious tenets, to enrich themselves with plunder — age-old strategies throughout the bloody centuries. Nothing new here.

What is new is a world interconnected by jet planes and Internet information in a way that was unimaginable in the past. Yes, there was the Silk Road and trade routes around the capes of the continents centuries ago. But they were open only to the adventurous few, and those few were more interested in commerce than in societal change. Too many people now have tasted the fruits of travel, enjoyed the wonders of seeing new treasures, tasting new foods, enjoying new dances, meeting new people, appreciating new lifestyles, applauding different forms of government, for the clock to ever be turned back. That is why the killers seek to destroy art and architecture wherever their bloodthirsty rampages take them. They don’t want people to see the different wonders of the world and equate them with new ways to live.

So, is it worth it? Is travel to return to only the most daring and adventurous who sailed the seas and trekked the land? I don’t think so. Remember that old song? “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”