Memo to Democrat Freshmen Class: “E” is for envelope

While a number of freshmen Democrats purchased campaign stationery in 2007, only one of them could spell it correctly, the Majority Accountability Project (majorityap.com) recently learned.

Nine House Democrats reported expenditures for “stationary” last year in campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).  Unless they were paying someone to remain motionless, they meant to list “stationery” – having forgotten an age-old spelling-assist mnemonic that “e” is for envelope.

Ironically, two are members of the House Education Committee and one, U.S. Representative John Yarmuth, D-KY, is a former newspaper and magazine editor.  In later reports, Yarmuth caught his spelling error, but took no chances.  Rather than correct “stationary,” he changed the listing to “letterhead and envelopes.”

The other spelling-challenged member of the House Education Committee, U.S. Representative John Sarbanes, D-MD, “completed a seven-year tenure as special assistant to the State Superintendent of Schools, serving as liaison to the Baltimore City Public Schools.”  Like Yarmuth, Sarbanes caught the spelling error, and changed the entry to “stationery” in his October FEC report.

U.S. Representatives Keith Ellison, D-MN, and Zack Space, D-OH, also misspelled stationery, but later corrected the entries.  Congressmen Ed Perlmutter, D-CO; Chris Murphy, D-CT; Bruce Braley, D-IA; Ron Klein, D-FL; and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, are the remaining spelling bee dropouts.

U.S. Representative Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH, a former teacher and a member of the House Education Committee, is the only member of the Democrat freshmen class who spelled “stationery” correctly on her first attempt.

Republican freshmen proved far better spellers.  While two members of the class misspelled the entry, four times as many Republicans spelled stationery correctly as did members of the Democrat class.