Still, candidates labor mightily to come down on the fried and unfussy end of things, lest they seem out of touch and be deemed unable to relate.
In an era when candidates labor to separate politics from their personal struggles, Ed Thompson is binding them together and running for redemption.
He also questioned the experience of the local pollster when compared with Tulchin, which does polls for Democratic candidates, labor and environmental organizations.
After four weeks of medical recuperation and not a day out campaigning, the candidate is laboring to regain his edge.
Before he became New York City's comptroller and then a Democratic mayoral candidate, Mr. Thompson labored in the vineyards of Kings County Democratic politics.
Mr. Steinbrück has also tried to stem a drift of Social Democrat supporters to the Left Party by naming a union leader, Klaus Wiesehügel, as his candidate for labor minister.
In a snub to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City's largest municipal union voted to endorse Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. for mayor on Wednesday night, giving the Democratic candidate crucial labor support, said two people briefed on the matter.
A week after the 24 October vote, UAW organizer Joan Moriarty, a Ph.D. candidate in labor economics, still shakes with anger as she recounts the bruising 18-month battle for the hearts and minds of her 2300 colleagues, two-thirds of them in science and engineering fields.
Even though many unions did not stand together behind a single mayoral candidate, the labor movement came out in force and made a real difference in how New York will move forward.
Scott Walker might be a good candidate if labor unions don't organize against him and the deficit he has grown in his own state with his radical ideas aren't seen as a big negative.
