No more Ms. Fancy Pants

If you have been calling the Indian Hill doctor who is running in the 2nd Congressional District primary Victoria Wells Wulsin, please stop it now.

That's so 2005.

Wednesday night at the monthly meeting of Democracy for Cincinnati, an organization made up of political activists who supported Howard Dean for president two years ago, Wulsin announced that she is now referring to herself as simply Victoria Wulsin.

"I've been told that in some parts of the district, the 'Wells' smacks of this uppity east coast thing, so I decided to drop it,'' Wulsin explained.

By "some parts of the district" she is referring to everything outside the I-275 loop - specifically, the district's eastern counties like Brown, Adams, Pike and Scioto, which are largely small town and rural and where, if you are going to tote around three names, you'd better be born there.

In last June's special Democratic primary, a candidate with two names - Paul Hackett - clobbered her there. But it wasn't her abundance of names that doomed Wulsin in the district's smaller counties; the fact that Hackett was a motorcycle riding, gun-toting Marine probably had more to do with it, even though he picks up his mail at a very nice house in Indian Hill too.

But Wulsin was not the only candidate at the Democracy for Cincinnati congressional candidates forum who has shed a name this time around.

Jim Parker, the health care administrator from Pike County who made a 200-mile round trip to Clifton so he could talk to 20 Democratic voters Wednesday night, ran for Congress last year, too, finishing fourth in the five-candidate race.

Last year, he appeared on the ballot as James John Parker, which is something that probably only his mother ever called him.

The only 2nd District candidate at Wednesday's forum who seems willing to stand pat with his moniker is Newtown businessman Thor Jacobs, a name which is kind of hard to forget.