Florence candidates gear up for general election
by Mark Cowling | Florence Reminder & Blade Tribune
Before voters want to hear about streets, taxes or economic development, they ask Town Council candidate Arthur “Snake” Neal about his nickname.
His uncle had the nickname first — “why, I don’t know,” Neal told listeners at a campaign event he and two other candidates held Sept. 2 at the Windmill Winery. Neal’s father thought his son looked just like his brother, and gave him the nickname, too. The name stuck, and it’s all anyone has ever called him.
Even his mother calls him Snake, and “If you know my mother, you would know the name is innocent.” When he was about to graduate high school, principal Joseph Gubbins asked him, “This is embarrassing, but what’s your real name?”
