Former champ prevails again at Spelling Bee
Experience proved invaluable at the 2025 Press & Politicians Spelling Bee, Thursday. The winner, Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia's Eighth Congressional District, also won the title in 2015, and has participated several times since.
Runner-up Jessica Mendoza of The Wall Street Journal participated in 2024, and secondrunner-up Alex Clearfield of Bloomberg Industry Group was last year’s winner.
Congressman Chris Pappas from New Hampshire's First Congressional District won in 2019.
Other repeat contenders included Congresswoman Hillary J. Scholten of Michigan’s Third Congressional district (who had her own claque cheering madly) and Ben Nuckols of The Associated Press, who has written about spelling bees as a journalist.
Although Beyer triumphed individually, Team Press came out ahead, with 34 points to Team Pols’ 32. (Each team earned one point for every correctly-spelled word). In the final half hour of the evening, Beyer was the last pol standing against Mendoza, Clearfield, and Diana Paulsen from ABC News Live.
The first P & P Spelling Bee was held in 1913, and then-president Woodrow Wilson came to watch. The event was revived in 2013 and has been held every year since, with the exception of pandemic years.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee chooses the words and categories for the NPC Bee, and provides pronunciation, definitions, and word etymology.
Dr. Jacques Bailly, Scripps’ official pronouncer, officiated. Other Scripps participants included 13-year-old Faizan Zaki, winner of the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee. He was responsible for buzzing wrong answers, and appeared to take great delight in doing so.
The first word category was “100 years of words” and words such as “bromance” and “algorithm” presented no problems for participants. The second category was “words from Rogers’ Rules of Order”, with which – one hopes -- the politicians had more than passing familiarity. Things got more serious with the third category, “words taken from the Federalist Papers and the Constitution that are still spelled the same way today.”
At this point Mendoza asked plaintively, “Whatever happened to cheeses?”
She spoke too soon because a subsequent category, embracing food and other natural substances, felled most of the participants. Of the final four, Paulsen was felled by “ferruginous,” Clearfield by “abomasum” (the fourth stomach of a ruminant, for the uneducated), and Mendoza by “trichinosis.” Beyer was flattened by “espalier” but that had been his first error so he earned the winner’s trophy. In 2024 he had been downed in the category of “Alaskan rivers” so he averred that his favorite category was “words I can spell.” His advice for other contenders: “Don’t be the first one out,” and he obviously took his own advice to heart.
This year’s event introduced a novelty before each category -- a lightning round in which a phrase from a famous speech included a missing word. One member of each team was asked to guess the word and then spell it correctly. If the two contenders could not guess the word, other team members from both sides had the opportunity to do so. This was a test of history as well as spelling prowess, and engaged the audience as well as the teams.
The Spelling Bee is a fund raiser for the National Press Club’s Journalism Institute, and this year it netted more than $20,000, thanks to attendance and the support of sponsors. The Institute’s development manager, Mitch Harle, reports being “delighted” with the enthusiastic turnout of more than 200 people.
Participants:
Pols
Congresswoman Hillary J. Scholten - Michigan’s Third Congressional district
Congressman Kevin Kiley - California's Third Congressional District
Congressman Don Beyer - Virginia's Eighth Congressional District
Congressman Chris Pappas - New Hampshire's First Congressional District
Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher - Texas’ Seventh Congressional District
Press
Diana Paulsen - Associate Producer at ABC News Live
Katie Vogel - Politics & D.C. Editor at The Associated Press
Ben Nuckols - Sports Writer & Editor at The Associated Press
Delece Smith-Barrow - Education Editor at POLITICO
Alex Clearfield - Deputy Team Lead for State Litigation at Bloomberg Industry Group
Jessica Mendoza - The Journal Podcast Co-Host at The Wall Street Journal