Voters will see a new name on the mayoral primary ballot next month. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to pronounce it.
A bunch of people tried when shown a piece of paper with Jeffrey Kerekes’ name on it. Click on the play arrow to watch their attempts.
Only one person — the last shown on the video, who’s a ringer — pronounced the candidate’s last name “Kur — EE — kess.”
Pronounced right or not, Kerekes — along with fellow Democratic mayoral challengers Clifton GRAY-vz and Anthony DAW-son — has injected some once-in-a-decade democracy into New Haven’s campaign season this year. Those three challengers learned Monday that city registrars have certified enough signatures from voters on petitions to place all their names on the Sept. 13 Democratic mayoral ballot. It’s the first four-way mayoral race in memory, and the first hotly contested mayoral campaign since 2001. (In New Haven, which last elected a Republican mayor in 1951, the Democratic primary has been tantamount to a general election.)
The three challengers square off against nine-term incumbent John De-STEF-a-no (mispronounced “Dee-stef-AH-no by some of the out-of-state pollers calling local voters to trash his opponents under the guise of conducting a survey).
Given DeStefano’s 18 years in the high-profile office, the challengers first of all face the challenge of getting their name out.
For a candidate like Kerekes, difficulties with pronunciation can actually present an opening, a marketing opportunity. Another office-seeker with an Eastern European last name, former Secretary of the State and current U.S. Senate hopeful Susan Bysiewicz (BICE-uh-witz) has found that to be the case at times. Click here to read a previous story about that, and on the play arrow at left to watch how New Haveners fared with her name.
“We thought of doing just ‘the Jeffrey campaign,’” said Kerekes, a psychotherapist and budget watchdog making his first run for public office in New Haven. Instead, he is including a phonetic spelling of his name on his campaign flyers. He is three-quarters of Hungarian descent, one-quarter Italian-American. The last name is Hungarian. (In Hungarian, it’s pronounced “KED-uh-kesh.”)
“It means ‘wheel-maker,’” he said. He translated the word into campaign-speak: “Everybody being a part of a community with spokes in the wheel; together all the spokes together makes the wheel work.”
priceless!!!
We constantly joke about his last name. But like Bysiewicz (BICE-uh-witz) I am confident that Jeffrey will become a household name in New Haven. He is a true representative for all the people of New Haven.