More races starting earlier

With the deadline for filing 2007 general election petitions a couple of weeks away, and party committee nominating process in the rearview mirror, it would not be uncommon to receive a press release or two about union endorsements of a particular candidate at this stage.

But I must admit to being taken aback slightly when our fax machine spit out just that - a candidate endorsement press release - earlier this week. That's because the press release pertained to a candidate seeking a state Legislature seat not this fall, but in 2008.

I was sure there were some readers, perhaps a few politics junkies, who would be interested in the information even at this early stage, so we published it in a news brief (and unfortunately had to print a correction because we should have been more specific about the local union units that had done the endorsing).