Our coverage of the race for County Executive between County Administrator Michael Hein and local businessman Len Bernardo has not been too extensive, to say the least. In fact, the last article that we printed regarding the race was concerned with a press conference held at Democratic headquarters in Kingston, where Hein unveiled his plans for the county should he be elected. The event even featured an endorsement from Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey. We also just received notice that Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer will be formally endorsing Hein on Friday in New Paltz.

Why no articles discussing Bernardo's endorsement deals? We'd like to believe it's not a case of bias, as we try and give equal coverage to both sides of the aisle — though, there will always be those in the reading public who say otherwise. In Mr. Bernardo's case, we simply don't receive very much press about him in terms of political endorsements.

We did, however, receive a number of letters to the editor espousing Mr. Bernardo's virtues. What raised our eyebrows (and prompted the writing of this editorial) was the fact that they all arrived on the same day, in identical envelopes. In the newspaper world, this kind of thing doesn't happen too often — or really, at all. It seemed to us at first glance that this was part of a concentrated effort on the part of the Bernardo campaign to try and falsely stuff our inbox with outpourings of support from community members.

Upon closer inspection, however, we discovered that the letters are in fact genuine. After speaking with a few of the letter writers, we found that, while some of them were composed and sent from Skate Time 209, the business owned by Bernardo, the writers themselves are not employees of the campaign, and wanted to do their part to show support for a candidate who isn't privy to endorsements from our state's political figures.

But what's the significance of these letters, really? While Bernardo himself is an independent, he's running on the Republican ticket, and in case you've not been paying attention, it seems somewhat likely that the nation as a whole is experiencing something of a Republican backlash. In essence, whether you agree with Hein's views or Bernardo's, it's clear to anyone that Hein has some distinct advantages to running his campaign in a state with Democratic representatives in the federal government. Bernardo has no such help to fall back on. The letters illustrate the inequities that can be found in two-party races, where either your party is in power, or it's not.

So what's the answer? We're not sure — it's a long-held belief among many in this country that a two-party system eliminates many people from having the chance to represent the people in our democracy. When receiving several letters of support for one candidate raises suspicions like it did ours, it says something about the way we've been trained to look at political campaigns, and what it says may not be too good.

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