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explainer: Answers to your questions about the news.

Yes, Related No. 1

Emily Yoffe
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, at 3:13 PM ET

Are Carter Eskew, an Al Gore strategist, and Tucker Eskew, a George W. Bush spokesman, related?

Yes! Normally Explainer explains how people with confusingly similar names are not related. But there is something ideologically eskew in the Eskew family: Carter and Tucker are second cousins--they share a paternal great-grandfather. (Neither is related, however, to former Democratic Florida governor and failed presidential candidate Rubin Askew.) Don't worry about a frosty Christmas for the Eskew clan, however. The political foes have only met once. And though Tucker Eskew got his first name from the last name of a great-great-grandmother, neither he nor another Bush spokesperson, Mindy Tucker, are aware of any genealogical connection. Nor does conservative TV pundit and writer Tucker Carlson, who also got his first name from a family surname, know of any common bloodlines among the three. Explainer doesn't buy it. Come on, Tuckers, go back to your family trees and find that first Republican who begat you all.

Previously in this series, Explainer looked at people who appeared to be related but weren't. Some of those tackled were the McCulloughs and Macaulays, the Gessens, Glennys, and Kaczynskis, the Cohens (three Stephens, four Richards), the Rays (two Elizabeths), the Hirschfelds (Abe and Al), the Strausses (Robert and R. Peter), the Broders (Jonathan, John M., and David), the Moores (three Michaels), and the Samuelsons (Paul, Robert, and Larry).

Next question? (Make it easy; Explainer is tuckered out.)

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Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to .
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