THE SIXTH SON. Watching the lead-up to G.O.P. debate in New Hampshire tonight on the Fox News Channel, it occured to me that local Republican chairman Fergus Cullen looks like he could be Mitt Romney‘s long-lost sixth son. As it turns out, he’s a 35-year-old former D.C. political staffer who graduated from Yale in 1994 and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 2002, which explains his slick Acela corridor look. He’s a well-known quantity to the local Democrats, as well. According to his own official bio:

In 2002, Fergus was the Republican nominee in the Rochester-based 6th state senate district, running a competitive race against a Democrat incumbent. Sensing an upset could happen, the NH Democrat Party challenged Fergus’s eligibility on residency grounds – Kathy Sullivan personally prosecuted the case – and the state ballot law commission ruled in her favor and removed Fergus from the ballot weeks before the November election. Fergus then managed the campaign for his replacement, Dick Green, who won and served two terms.

No chip on that shoulder that I can see.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.