Family values were the focus Friday when Michael Arcuri announced he is seeking re-election to Congress.
“It's time to start talking about family values,” Arcuri, D-Utica, said outside city hall in Auburn Friday.
“Not the kind of family values from some Washington bureaucrat or some think tank that play more politically, but rather the kind of family values that matter to the people from upstate New York.”
This is, frankly, an amazing course of action. Mr. Arcuri has now opened the door to an examination of every sordid detail of his own "family values", a conversation that I didn't think he really wanted to have. His official biography is amazingly circumspect about the dissolution of his first marriage, but I have a feeling that the reason for his divorce could well become a campaign issue.
It is, after all, about "family values".
Update: A kind emailer suggests that Mr. Arcuri's "family values" are, indeed, the usual Washington version- universal single-payer health care, repeal of secret ballots in union elections, more entitlement funding, etc. It's the same re-framing approach designed to appeal to the so-called "values voters" that his campaign used in 2006. It's most emphatically *not* an invitation to question his marital fidelity, or lack thereof.
