On the evening before the Democratic nominee for mayor turned 28, a local media outlet published, under the word EXCLUSIVE, its finding that for most of his adult life he had used one of his two surnames rather than the other. Neither surname appears in this report.

The outlet said it had reviewed numerous records tied to the nominee’s education and employment. It found a 2018 commencement program that listed him under his father’s surname and a 2019 video from his graduate program that captioned him the same way; he confirmed he had used that name for a consultancy with a state education department in Colorado and for a student loan from an authority in Oklahoma. In the outlet’s search, the surname he uses now first appears in 2020, when he ran for the General Assembly.

Two-surname names exist. People who have them are known by the first, by the second, and by both, depending on the form, the clerk, and the year. The nominee said as much: institutions, he told the outlet, “don’t always honor two last names,” and sometimes file the second one as a middle name. He had first said he had always used both. The outlet checked, and found many of his classmates in the 2018 program listed under two or more surnames, and him under one. This paper regards that as the same fact reported twice. A man with two surnames used one of them.

Asked why, the nominee said he had not seen his father since he was eight. He said he had been “embarrassed by my dad’s last name because of how he treated my mom.” He said he chose “to honor my grandfather, the father of my mom,” over a man who had left her in a vulnerable position, and that there was “nothing deceiving” in it. The outlet printed all of this, and published the finding anyway.

The finding follows a summer of them. In July the outlet secured a video from a fundraiser in New York and reported that the nominee’s supporters saw the city as “a laboratory for municipal socialism.” In August it counted the donors listed as not employed and found them to be a fifth. Before the vote, it endorsed the incumbent, calling the nominee “a great addition to the political landscape” while doubting his range. He won. Six days later, the outlet reviewed his name.

Ball Street marked the outlet shnort at the open and did not move.

The nominee has said he would like his name read as both surnames, the father’s first. In November he faces a Republican the outlet describes as a perennial candidate. The Republican is also named David.