Arlington’s congressman took home the title at the latest annual spelling competition between politicians and members of the media.
Rep. Don Beyer (D) won the National Press Club’s annual “Press & Politicians Spelling Bee” on June 25. His winning word was “stygian,” meaning “of or relating to the river Styx” or “extremely dark, gloomy or forbidding.”
Beyer previously took home the crown in his first “Press & Politicians” bee in 2015 and came in second last year.
This year, the congressman made one error trying to spell “espalier,” meaning a plant trained to grow flat against a support, but he was otherwise clean en route to his win.
“My goal was not to be the first one out,” Beyer told ARLnow. “Somehow, I got words I knew, and the other guys got words they didn’t know.”
Beyer was on a team with four other congresspeople pitted against six members of the press.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Mendoza and Bloomberg’s Alex Clearfield came in second and third place, respectively. Those performances led “Team Press” to a victory despite Beyer’s first-place individual finish, according to The National Press Club.
The Press Club’s bee, which took place at the organization’s ballroom in D.C., follows a format similar to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
It’s broken up into different categories with specific themes. This year, the first category was “100 years of words,” including the terms “bromance” and “algorithm.”
Other categories listed in a media release were “words from Rogers’ Rules of Order” and “words taken from the Federalist Papers and the Constitution that are still spelled the same way today.”
Initially held in 1913 with President Woodrow Wilson in attendance, the spelling bee did not happen again for 100 years until it was reintroduced in 2013. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) won that year.
The bee is also a fundraiser for the National Press Club’s Journalism Institute, bringing in more than $20,000 from attendance and sponsors at this year’s event.
Photo via National Press Club/X
