Bill Peirce's hat trick

Can anyone imagine Gov. Bob Taft or any of the other gubernatorial candidates -- Ken Blackwell, Ted Strickland or Bob Fitrakis -- wearing a three-cornered hat? (If they have, please send us photos!)

Well, Bill Peirce, on the Nov. 7 ballot as an independent candidate for governor, had the ^&*#&#s to wear one Tuesday with his wife, Nynke, marching by his side at a Cleveland-area Fourth of July parade.

In a news statement, Peirce wrote: "The 4th of July is the special day for celebrating the great vision of theDeclaration of Independence. That is the vision of free individuals, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, who band together to form a government whose function is to protect and defend those individual rights.
In Liberty,"
Bill Peirce

That reminds me. In a 1999 year-end interview with the governor, Taft showed off a photograph of himself wearing a white 10-gallon cowboy hat, joking he looked a bit like Akron magnate David Brennan, owner of charter school operator White Hat Management.