Write-In Winners

Write-In Winners

Ken Rudin's colorful column on NPR is always a fun read for the political trivia buff. Today, with the write-in effort in Tom DeLay's district (and of course Sam Garchik's write-in school board campaign) Rudin looks at three recent write-in winners in congressional races:

Dale Alford, 1958, Arkansas: last-second segregationist campaign

Joe Skeen, 1980, New Mexico: late incumbent death

Ron Packard, 1982, California: second place finisher in 18-way (!) GOP primary

Usually around here, it's less dramatic: if no one files for township trustee or small town city council, someone wins with two or three votes. For ties a name gets drawn; less dramatic than in Nevada where the folks who are tied play a hand of poker!

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Briefly noted:

Coralville Native American Dewey Harris fired by Heartland Trucking for not getting a haircut. Didn't know crap like that was still legal. I lost a convenience store job 20 years ago for long hair (that was when I had hair); nowdays if you excluded anyone with a nontraditional haircut, piercing or tattoo you couldn't staff a store. Anyway, this bugs me for multiple reasons: the traditional and spiritual issues for long hair and Native men, and just my own personal preferences growing up at the tail end of the baby boom era (I'd still have the long hair if it hadn't fallen out; decided that the Larry Finkelstein look was less than dignified)

Interesting Register column on the shift to biofuels and the potential impact on agriculture. Key paragraph buried deep:

Such changes might even affect the American diet. If the byproducts of ethanol production are channeled into replacing petrochemicals, instead of into cattle feed, Americans might have to cut their consumption of meat, all the more so if pasture is converted to switchgrass for energy production.

Is the PETA argument going mainstream?