Thursday, June 21, 2007

Campaign wordplay on a sunny day

Wappinger Supervisor Joe Ruggiero got the endorsement today of the Hudson Valley Building and Construction Trades Council in his race for Dutchess County executive.

That's not entirely surprising given that labor traditionally is a Democratic constituency, and Ruggiero is a Democrat, though Council President Todd Diorio also said County Executive Bill Steinhaus, a Republican, hadn't attended union meetings or candidate interviews when asked.

As Diorio gave his brief speech, I followed along on his press release and was amused by this misspelling of the county executive's name: "Steinhouse."

I certainly don't bring this up to mock Diorio or his affiliated unions – more to highlight the idiosyncracies, for lack of a better term, between written and oral communication. (I'm hardly one to criticize someone's spelling, as I clutch my Webster's New World Dictionary like a security blanket.)

Perhaps a more relevant observation – though only slightly more relevant – was the way Ruggiero described Steinhaus in accepting the endorsement. As with many political candidates, he dispensed with the proper name altogether for the impersonal "my opponent."

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You'd be surprised how often labor in this area, particularly the trade unions, tend to endorse Republicans. My guess is that this is a result of many GOP officials being more than willing to allow unregulated, rampant development, which is viewed as creating more construction jobs in the short term.