Today's English Lesson

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Our sample of Incorrect English comes today from a news article by Philip Elliot, who writes:

The endorsement comes as Rubio, a surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race and is instead running as an independent, reported some $4.4 million in campaign cash.

I'm sure that Philip intended us to understand that Charlie Crist is running for the Senate as an independent, but that's not what he wrote. Let me break the sentence down a bit to explain:

Main clause subject: endorsement
Main clause predicate: comes
Subordinate clause subject: Rubio
Subordinate clause predicate: reported
Subordinate clause object: $
Appositive clause subject: candidate
Appositive clause predicates: forced, running
Appositive clause object: Charlie Crist

Since the Appositive clause takes the same subject as the Subordinate clause, we can switch them around and should get the same result:

A surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race, Rubio is instead running as an independent.

Ah, but it is Crist, not Rubio, who is running as an independent. The original sentence should have read:

The endorsement comes as Rubio, a surprise candidate who forced Gov. Charlie Crist to abandon his campaign for the Republican Party's nomination in the race and run instead as an independent, reported some $4.4 million in campaign cash.

Now let's analyze the corrected sentence.

Main clause subject: endorsement
Main clause predicate: comes
Subordinate clause subject: Rubio
Subordinate clause predicate: reported
Subordinate clause object: $
Appositive clause subject: candidate
Appositive clause predicate: forced
Appositive clause object: Charlie Crist
Infinitive clause predicates: abandon, run
Infinitive clause object: campaign