Alex Sink is the Democratic...

...candidate for governor in Florida. In Wikipedia, it says that "she is a descendant of the famous conjoined 'Siamese Twins,' Chang and Eng Bunker." And I thought, No way, that has to be some sort of prank.

But according to the St. Petersburg Times:

Sink is the great-granddaughter of "the twins," as she calls them. She grew up in the house Chang and Eng built, and speaks of them both with unmistakable pride and with a little trepidation. She speaks of their commitment to education, intellectualism and the business savvy for a couple of P.T. Barnum circus attractions to decide to cut out the middleman to make enough money to become farmers. Then she acknowledges the trepidation.

Strangers would come to see her house growing up. On the streets of Mount Airy, people would sometimes stop and ask the little girl with the hint of oriental features, "Are you one of the Bunkers?"

"When I was growing up my grandmother would even refuse to talk about the twins," she said, noting how proud she had always been. "We didn't talk about it a lot. I grew up in a puritan age, and there was always the sex thing," she said, referring to twins' nearly two dozen children. Then there's the pride in community: "Here are these two circus attractions who ended up settling in redneck North Carolina and were accepted in the community."

Sink's father, Kester Sink (a very un-PC pistol we last saw ogling waitresses at a West Tampa campaign event during her husband Bill McBride's gubernatorial campaign in 2002 - precisely why, Sink says, he'll be kept out of sight in this campaign) still lives in the Eng/Chang home and talked to National Geographic.

"Sink, a successful businessman who owns the largest chunk of Bunker land, does not suffer fools and ferociously protects the Bunker legacy. "They were not freaks," he says with a stare that dares you to think otherwise. "They were human beings who had a tremendous physical adversity to overcome. They left their home in Siam, their mother and family, and immediately picked up the language, mores, and manners of their adopted country. They were gutsy, smart, and self-confident."