Word Cloud from the Election Night Live Blog

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Last night's live blog generated 2830 comments from our readers. This morning, I plugged the text from all of those comments into Wordle.net, and came up with some neat word visualizations. You can try it, too, if you want. Click here for Wordle.net, click here to download viewer comments. Another of my Wordles.

Comments

[dale tillotson]

That was great Cathy. I see the word Kiss is missing. Does that mean he has resigned?

[faried]

But where's Tony O' Connor?

[Lisa Crean]

The word cloud is awful purdy!

[Jeff]

Tony O'Connor should be the bigest name in there! He was the surprise of the election after all.

[Andy Bromage]

I've got to agree about Tony O'Connor. That was clearly the upset of the night. Most successful come-from-behind in election history, and he doesn't even get a mention in the worlde?

[Cathy Resmer]

I see "Tony" in there between "know" and "thanks"...

[Tyler Machado]

People were spelling his name all kinds of ways -- O'Connor, OConnor, O'Conner...

For those who have no idea what we're talking about: Late in the night, WCAX's website had a glitch (well, we THINK it was a glitch) that caused all the towns that had reported a Shumlin victory on their results page to suddenly start reporting a guy named Tony O'Connor as their winner. Really strange.

[Jeff]

Tyler,

Don't forget, by that point the live blogging had been going on for a good 6 or 7 hours so I'm thinking everyone (including myself) was a wee bit loopy and we just ran with it. I will always remember the night I first heard of the myth of...no wait... the legend of, Tony O'Connor.

[Morgan W. Brown]

During the live blog I seem to recall people either wondering who Tony O'Connor was or which one was being referred to and there were those who assumed it was someone of certain fame.

Although I am not sure if anyone had mentioned it during the live blog, just in case no one had, Tony O'Connor ran as a candidate for Governor of Vermont in 2008, here.

By the way, since it could have been some sort of computer or human error somewhere at WCAX or wherever -- unless there was hacking at play, has anyone in the press or elsewhere looked into what had caused this particular WCAX Website glitch or whatever it was?

[Morgan W. Brown]

Back to Tony O'Connor once again, least people forget or are otherwise in need of reminding, there are these three profiles, interviews or news articles still available online from the 2008 Vermont gubernatorial campaign about him, here (via WPTZ; includes video), here (via VPR News; archived audio) and here (via Newport Daily Express).

The Independent candidate had received 3,487 votes, earning him 1.1 percent (here; via NY Times).

For those wondering where he is these days, what I have managed to come across about him thus far indicates that he flew the coop last year, at least for the Winter anyway, here (via Sarasota Herald Tribune).

[Morgan W. Brown]

As a follow-up to my initial comment within this thread, it would appear that Tony O'Connor had let his ownership of the domain (url) for his former campaign Website expire and someone from across our Northern border has taken it over and is using it -- as well as the former candidate's name and photo -- for other purposes (I do not remember his campaign Website ever looking like this Website; in fact, at one point and if I recall correctly, his Website had been hacked and taken down for a while during the campaign as well).

[Bethany Dunbar]

Tony O'Connor of Derby is a retired Border Patrol agent who was hurt in an electrical accident as a youngster and has two prosthetic legs and one arm. Despite his physical issues he has accomplished a lot. I first met him when ho got a hole in one in golf and I took his picture for the Freeps. He is very involved in the local Civil War Roundtable and his newest thing is doing standup comedy. Very cool guy. I wonder if he knows about all this!

[Tony O'Connor]

Hi to All, When I ran for Governor of Vermont I was not a professional politician nor do I ever want to become one! When I did run in 2008 I hoped to pull a Fred Tuttle being a triple amputee who has done some unusual things; police officer, golfer, racquetball, built my own house & other P.R.B.S. Anyway to make a long story short the press couldn't have cared less about me and I didn't have the buckos to get noticed any other way. I offered some new unique approaches to our state's problems with energy, health care, milfoil, schools, abortion, law enforcement etc. I didn't just say I wanted things to get better - I offered concrete specific answers that unfortunately very few ever heard. Oh well life goes on and the two people who voted for me have moved on too. Would I run again? Not without better odds and I fail to see how that can happen unless I win the lottery! Thanks for remembering me. I can most easily be contacted at [email protected] bye bye