Chris Warkentin, the incumbent MP for Peace River, was never the local Conservative party’s first pick for MP, even if he was former MP Charlie Penson’s pick.  At least, as I’ve mentioned before, his nomination raised enough ire within the party that in the last election, Grande Prairie town councillor Bill Given took him on as an independent, in large part because he didn’t get a chance to try for the nomination himself.  Given’s Conservative support helped him come in second in the last election, Warkentin’s closest competition by far with around 9800 votes.  Of course, compared to Warkentin’s almost 28,000 votes it wasn’t a close race whatsover.  (Incidentally, this election Given says he’s voting Green, an interesting choice since the Greens received only 2% of the vote last time, and have a very small, if dedicated, core group running their campaign.  Green candidate Jennifer Villebrun, however, has done well at forums and is both well-spoken and upbeat, and will likely get a boost from the popularity of leader Elizabeth May.) But what will happen to all of those disaffected and largely Conservative voters who voted for Given?  That’s 9800 voters who already broke with a long tradition of voting Conservative in the Peace River riding once in the past.  Will they mark their “x” by Warkentin’s name now, despite their dissatisfaction with him, out of party loyalty?  Or will they seek another alternative in this election?  Perhaps like Given, those voters will turn to the Greens, with their fiscal conservatism.  Or might they even turn to the NDP, third place after Given in the last election?

There are some other factors to consider too.  The nuclear issue continues to polarize the riding.  In Valleyview, a Conservative bastion where in my experience to be progressive was almost to be spit upon in the past, audience members at the recent forum stood up and called out to Warkentin to “take a stand, take a stand” on the proposed nuclear power plant, frustrated with his continued waffling (Warkentin has stead-fastedly refused to take a position on nuclear, saying either that it’s a provincial issue or that he has no personal opinion, and carefully saying nothing about his party’s support for nuclear energy in general).  If Warkentin said he supported nuclear, there are any number of people who would agree.  There are also those who would refuse to vote for him as a result.  But trying to straddle the fence doesn’t seems to be earning Warkentin any points, if the Valleyview forum was any indication.

 Another factor is Warkentin’s group of core supporters at the Peace River Bible Institute in Sexsmith.  They were out in force at the 2006 election forum in Grande Prairie, having travelled out together in several identical white vans to ask questions of candidates like why the government allowed nudity in art.  Yet they were conspiciously absent at the most Grande Prairie forum in this election (while nuclear protestors were there and asking questions).  It could be that the Bible College crowd doesn’t feel Warkentin needs any more extra help, now that he’s an incumbent and sure to win. Or could it be that they are upset with Warkentin for not doing more on their key issues, abortion and gay marriage? After all, it has been tough lately for Warkentin to walk this line as well.  His religious beliefs clearly include a personal opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and if you press him personally, as I did after the Peace River forum, he will admit to having personal views to that effect.  But he hasn’t said so flat out while campaigning, and his religious supporters expect him to do actually something about it.

 It’s not that Warkentin hasn’t tried.  He has raised the issues in the House of Commons, memorably trying to focus on the alleged damage gay marriage does to children (his cries of “what about the children” were subsequently dubbed “the Lovejoy factor” by the Upper Canadian blog), and supporting a crime bill, C-484 (the Unborn Victims of Crime Act), that might have reopened the abortion debate by giving special status to the life of an unborn child as a victim.  Which seems like a good point to note that Dr. Henry Morgentaler received the Order of Canada today for his role in making abortion legal in Canada, an award Warkentin also opposed.

 But Warkentin was dealt a blow when the Conservative Justice Minister dropped C-484 in August, right before the election.  The cynical, or the realistic, might say that the Harper government was afraid of being called anti-abortion during the election, a dangerous political position when polls consistently show Canadians remain supportive of legal abortion.  Warkentin was one of the few MPs who vowed to carry forward the bill despite his own government’s refusal to support it.  But with Harper and his spokesperson continuing to say another Conservative government will not support private members bills on abortion, does Warkentin really have a chance?  And will his statements in the House be enough for his religious supporters, or are they becoming frustrated with what, to them, may seem like a lot of talk and very little action, and a lack of support from Harper?

 There is one last change in the riding since the last election, and that is the introduction of candidates for two parties that have never had a presence before, the Canadian Action Party (CAP) and the Libertarians.  The votes they will draw will likely be small, but there is no question Peace River residents have more choice than ever before on their ballots.

 All of this may add up to a more interesting election result than expected, or it may amount to nothing more than a little more mild grumbling as people obediently mark their “x” for the Conservatives as they always have.  Fortunately, we’re only one long weekend away from finding out.

Going into the last week of a campaign, the buzz on the street is always your most important indicator of the outcome. When you work with the media, candidates and their campaigns will try and spin you a hundred different ways. So you need to hang out with real people who aren’t directly tied to campaigns. A good chunk of my weekend was spent talking to other people, from other parents at our kids’ Saturday afternoon activities to folks in the coffee shop to the nice people next to me in the pew Sunday morning.

The buzz is pretty much unanimous: Another Harper minority, another local win for Tony Martin (NDP). My gut feeling agrees with the latter. As one poster’s better half, a fellow parent, put it to me at the Y: “Tony is a safe bet. At least you know what he will do, which is nothing. Nobody is sure about the other [candidates].”

I’m not so sure it won’t be a Harper majority; the late NDP surge – they’re now in a statistical tie with the Liberals – may allow Tories to come up the middle in ridings where they otherwise weren’t competitive.

So barring some major faux pas this week, I’m predicting a Tony Martin win locally and a slim Tory majority nationally.

In speaking with other voters over the weekend, here’s what I found most interesting: They’re still asking the same questions about each candidate that they were asking when the writ was dropped.

Here are the questions:

- What has Tony Martin (NDP) done for this riding?

- Who is Cameron Ross (Conservative)?

- Why is Paul Bichler (Liberal), who has made Southern Ontario his home for the past few years, now running in the Sault?

- Why vote Luke MacMichael (Green), Cory Mcleod (First Nations Peoples Party) or Mike Taffarel (Marxist-Leninist) when their chances of winning are minute?

Note to individual campaigns: You have only a week left, so don’t waste time shooting the messenger. Answer the question for voters. They’re the ones who will decide your fate on October 14, not annoying Internet pundits like me.

Anyway, here are my predicted numbers for the Sault Ste. Marie riding:

1 – Tony Martin – 17,000
2 – Cameron Ross – 14,000
3 – Paul Bichler – 11,000
4 – Luke McMichael – 1,500
5 – Cory Mcleod – 500
6 – Mike Taffarel – 150

How did I arrive at these numbers? That’s easy. I asked my four-year-old, who is much more current in these matters than her old man.

One question that keeps coming up locally is how does Tony Martin keep winning elections when just under two-thirds of local voters opt for other candidates and the popular perception is that he has not delivered anything to this riding. The short answer is as follows: he’s a political care bear. He shows up at opportune times from his cloudy kingdom to tell you he cares.

But here’s a longer explanation. I agree with Mac Headrick, a local NDP columnist with whom I have the pleasure of writing at SooToday.com. You can check out Mac’s columns here. Mac has repeatedly told supporters of other parties to quit whining about Tony’s wins and take an honest look at how Tony wins them.

Saying Tony comes up the middle because the Sault is an NDP riding just doesn’t work any more. At one time, yes, the Sault was a NDP power base. But the local NDP base strength has been eroding now for some years. Need proof? Look no further than the Sault’s MPP, David Orazietti.

A Tory collapse can account for Orazietti’s 2003 provincial win, in which he defeated NDP incumbent Tony Martin. (This would set the stage for Tony to enter the federal race a year later and narrowly win the seat from Liberal incumbent Carmen Provenzano). A similar Tory collapse helped Orazietti retain his seat for the the Liberals in the 2007 Ontario election, but Orazietti also increased his percentage of popular vote in 2007 while driving that of the NDP down by six percentage points, to 26.4 percent. By way of comparison, Tony pulled in 38.9 percent of the vote during the 2006 federal election – a difference of over 12 percentage points from what the provincial NDP candidate, Jeff Arbus, pulled in the 2007 provincial election. And in the raw vote count, Tony doubled Arbus. Polls show Tony pulling in similar numbers this election.

These are Tony votes, not NDP votes. These are people voting for the local candidate and not the party. So why do they vote Tony?

Numerous polls and studies, from different political parties and non-partisan groups, in different geo-political areas, and independent of each other, more-or-less come up with the same results when determining how people vote. It’s something like this:

- 60% – Does the candidate care about me and the community?
- 30% – Policy
- 10% – Other

Like it or not, this is what comes up time and time again. This is the difference between Tony’s numbers and those brought in by Jeff Arbus. It’s Tony’s reputation as “a nice guy, who cares about his constituents.” It’s the little things Tony has done to make himself visible in this community, and behind-the-scenes, like helping the elderly fill out passport applications. He doesn’t bring in any big money to the riding, other popular local politicians cannot rely upon him, but everyone in the riding has a personal story about Tony personally helping some disadvantaged relative maneuvre through governmental red tape.

The perception may or may not be true in real life, but it’s the popular perception. And like it or not, people vote according to their perception.

The same is true about the popular perception about the Sault’s other local politicians who keep getting re-elected by large margins:

- Orazietti: Cares about the community and its future. Look at the money he brings in.

- Councillor Frank Manzo: Cares about the average taxpayer. Only politician to return people’s phone calls. Will help you even when your own councillor is not getting back to you.

- Mayor John Rowswell: Has the personality of grumpy bear being woken up during hibernation, but he cares about this community and its people and is just trying to move us forward. So people take his side when he feuds with local reporters, city administrators, and other local politicians.

For Liberal candidate Paul Bichler or Conservative candidate Cameron Ross to win, each needs to establish himself, as soon as possible during this last week of campaigning, as the candidate who most cares about the Sault and its people. I have no doubt that this is the case in real life, but it needs to be popular perception. When people don’t know enough about a candidate, they don’t know if that candidate cares or not.

Which is why Tony Martin keeps winning.

The operatives of the “big tent” parties–the Liberals and Conservatives–have been busy flinging unidentified substances at the Greens and the NDP for harbouring candidates of odd and unsavoury views. The latest one of these to drop is Andrew McKeever, whose misogynist and pro-war comments finally forced his resignation. He’ll never be missed–at least by me.

But these same operatives are strangely silent when some of their own are exposed. Take Liberal candidate for York Centre, Ken Dryden. Please.

Ken wants to seal off Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world. Here he is, on the record:

“In front of a split audience in the sanctuary of the Beth Emeth synagogue on Wilmington…the ex-hockey guy’s eyes hardened as he advocated no truck or trade with the ‘terrorists’ in the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza.

“Then he offered this shocker: ‘Stop all aid that flows into Gaza. While that may seem a harsh measure that will hurt Palestinian civilians… it is the right thing to do at this time.’”

[H/t Alison via PSA]

80% of Gazans rely on humanitarian assistance to survive. The implications of Dryden’s words are very clear. We have heard no howls of outrage by Jason Cherniak as yet. Maxed out, Jason?

Dryden joins Conservative hopeful in Thornhill, Peter Kent, an executive official of an extremist anti-Muslim organization, Canadian Coalition for Democracies. His colleagues there have called for bombing Iran and wiping Islam from the face of the earth. “Muslims,” declares his CCD President, Alastair Gordon, have “small minds” and “no humanity.”

The article in Toronto’s NOW magazine continues:

“One reason the Liberals probably won’t pay a price for the Tories’ dedicated loyalty to the Israeli government is that the Grits hold exactly the same position now. Aside from Michael Ignatieff’s musing – and then step-down – about Israel committing “war crimes” in Lebanon, the Libs’ policy has generally morphed from bipartisan to Israel-positive.

“Sure, Dryden did some hand-wringing at the meeting about how awful it is that Canada is no longer seen as the exponent of diplomacy and the honest broker it once was.

“But as even B’nai Brith exec VP Frank Dimant admits, the parties have no real differences. Dimant points to his friend Irwin Cotler, the Lib MP for Mount Royal and former justice minister, as a case in point.

“‘His positioning on Middle East and Jewish issues in general is very close today to where the Conservative party is,’ says Dimant, described by Embassy Magazine as one of the top foreign policy influencers in Ottawa.

“But this consensus on Israel is a worry, says former ambassador to the UN Paul Heinbecker, particularly because of international law. “We tend to accept the argument that Israel is a democracy – ‘Who are we to criticize what the Israelis do? [Whatever] the Palestinians do is ipso facto wrong’ – I’m thinking of Hamas. This is not an approach that leads anywhere except to more deadlock.”

“But pushing for a more complex view of the Mideast isn’t for the faint of heart. Steve Scheinberg, a retired Concordia history prof and Canadian Friends of Peace Now activist, laments that his group lacks the resources to lobby politicians for a view counter to mainstream Jewish orgs.

“‘I don’t think the Conservatives are that interested in the Middle East per se,” he says. “What I think they are interested in is winning some Jewish votes and money.’” [Emphases added. --DD]

Vile comments and questionable associations might be seen as mere political pandering, in other words. But I have no reason to think that the personal beliefs of Ken Dryden are not in sync with his public utterances, nor that those of Peter Kent are in opposition to the organization that he helps to lead.

There is a further issue here, however–perhaps the key one–that needs to be spelled out. Do Liberals and Conservatives really think that the significant complement of Jewish voters in York Centre will be swayed by calls for crimes against humanity? Is the Thornhill candidate’s leadership position in an extremist organization expected to appeal to them? Do these voters, en bloc, want to starve a civilian population to death, or throw Islam into the rubbish-bin of history, or bomb Iran?

Isn’t this selling Jewish voters a little short, in fact–indeed, a lot short? Isn’t the implicit assumption that Jewish electors lack humanity and tolerance–anti-Semitic? Come on, Cherniak, get on this. We can’t clean up the darker corners of the establishment parties all by ourselves.

Buckets has a twelfth question for Peter Kent. Now let’s pluck a few more statements from the bubbling stew of extremism that is the “Canadian Coalition for Democracies,” on whose Board the Conservative candidate for Thornhill sits:

• Islam and the terrorism it promotes must be religated [sic] to the ash bin of history, much like what we had to do with National Socialism in Europe in the last century. –Naresh Raghubeer, CCD Executive Director [NB: This quote was subsequently taken down by CCD--presumably the mask slipped just a tad too far--but nothing disappears entirely on the Internet. --DD]
• Just by looking around the world, who could be blamed for concluding that Islam is a savage, barbaric, primitive, cruel, despotic religion… –Alistair Gordon, CCD President*
• Maoists, Muslims – small minds, big ideas, no humanity. Interesting how Canada kowtows both to the Muslim world and to Mao’s China, while marginalizing those who should be our natural allies… — Alastair Gordon, CCD President**
• Louise Arbour – Islamist mouthpiece at the UN … When you thought Canada’s unprincipled foreign policy, based primarily on being anti-American, could not sink any lower, we have the idiotic statements of Canada’s own Louise Arbour… — Alastair Gordon, CCD President
• There are all sorts of things that one cannot do on an airplane, including push-ups in the aisle and yoga. If these imams are so devout and pious, then it is their duty to avoid travel if it interferes with their piety. It is not the duty of the traveling public or airline operators to accomodate their rituals, especially when thier own safety is at risk. –Alastair Gordon, CCD President [The imams in question were praying in the airport, not on a plane. --DD]
• Well, it looks to me like Sid Ryan [the President of CUPE Ontario] just confirmed that CUPE’s boycott of Israel is plain, old fashioned Jew-hatred, not unlike that of his socialist mentors, the National Socialist (Nazi) Party of Germany. –Alastair Gordon, CCD President

There you have it. The religion of Islam is “primitive” and “barbaric,” and should disappear from the earth. Respected jurist Louise Arbour is an “Islamist mouthpiece.” CUPE’s Sid Ryan is a Nazi.

Thirteenth question: Does Kent, a member of CCD’s Executive Committee, endorse these extremist statements by his fellow CCD executive members?

[H/t Canadian Observer]

_____________
*There seems to have been a little judicious housecleaning over at CCD Central. This quotation no longer appears at CCD, but is quoted here. Readers who are interested will be able to find a message numbered 8319.shtml with an indicated follow-up by Gordon that has been removed. The next message is 8321.shtml.

**Another message down the memory hole. This was once message 2429.shtml. Message 2428.shtml still exists, as does message 2430.shtml. Gordon’s missing words are quoted here.

Bloggers have attracted a bit of teeth-gnashing from some establishment pundits today.

The topic is the recent spate of candidate immolation that has been sparked in some cases by bloggers on the job.

The Ottawa Citizen’s national editor, Andrew Potter, and a former speechwriter for Paul Martin, Scott Reid (not to be confused with the Tory MP of that name) are in a snit. Kady O’Malley, bless her, manages to avoid this kind of thing: “[W]hat are the three things you need to be a blogger? Your laptop. Your basement. And your virginity.”

That’s Scott Reid, setting a new benchmark for lameness.

And here’s Potter:

“What worries me, though, is that we’re seeing the “democratization” of politics, in the most literal sense of the word: The people — the great idiocratic mass of mouth-breathers out there frantically swiping the drool off their keyboards as they Google around for “dirt” — are running the campaigns now. There aren’t war rooms anymore, directed by parties with smart, educated, responsible adults in charge — it’s Hobbes’ state of nature as imagined by Mike Judge.”

Yup, democracy is too precious to squander on the people: that “idiocratic mass of mouth-breathers.” Heaven forbid that the reign of mainstream journalists be threatened by the rabble. I like that notion of war rooms with “smart, educated, responsible adults in charge,” too–the ones who gave us pooping puffins and insults to the family of a dead soldier.

O’Malley makes the glaringly obvious point, in fact, that the press has fallen behind this rabble in nailing down what she calls “candidate eruptions.” But her next comment–that, unlike us, journalists need to worry about “boring, grownup stuff like contributory defamation liability, which is so non-Web 2.0″–is simply foolish and uninformed. One needs to ask where she’s been lately: bloggers are all-too-aware of the sweep of our defamation laws, as some have found to their cost, and we observe precisely the same standards in this respect as the media hacks who miss so many good scoops.

In fact, speaking of standards, here’s Reid piping up again:

“I actually think it’s A-OK for the media to maintain a few measly standards that separate them from the likes of ‘chubbylover69′ and the rest of the self-defined blogosphere press gallery. One of my pet peeves is the habit of mainstream media ‘reporting’ on bloggers who have posted rumours without source or sense of motivation.”

Yeah, that must hurt, Scott–not only do the mainstream journalists miss some great stories, but some of the press–in particular the National Post–actually acknowledge the work we do. And that’s not based upon rumour-mongering, but on hard facts and solid research that you folks are too lazy, too incompetent or too constrained by deadlines and groupthink to investigate for yourselves.

It wasn’t the posting of “rumours without source or sense of motivation” (whatever that latter phrase means) that forced the removal of political candidates like Lesley Hughes: it was a few minutes of research and fact-checking that you were unable or unwilling to do. I never thought I’d say this, but Kate McMillan may be onto something with her “Not Waiting for the Asteroid” series. You folks are just too full of yourselves; you’re the voice of an entrenched institution defending your decaying castle.

You’ve fallen down on the job time after time, and bloggers have had to fill the gap–whether it was police involvement in the Montebello riots, the phoney doctorate of Harper intimate Charles McVety, or the unsavoury comments, behaviour and connections of members of the current candidate pool.

I would suggest, instead of this unseemly moaning and stamping your feet, that we have a symbiotic relationship taking shape, whether we like it or not, and we should all make the best of it. Those who think that bloggers are actually going to replace the so-called “MSM” someday are dreaming in technicolour–the bulk of our material, after all, comes from the media. But not all of it does–nor the connections we are able to make, and the research we are able to do while newsprint waits for the presses and the electronic media processes, cans and delivers information at set times. Nor do we fuss about advertisers and owners, and craft (or spike) our stories accordingly.

And the other thing that rankles the groupthinkers no end, of course, is that we bloggers have a refreshing assortment of intelligent takes on current events, offering a wider variety by far than is what is spoonfed to us by a corporate, lockstep media that serves the status quo so very, very well.

I believe we can help each other in the public interest. But small-minded, petty whining by those who feel their privilege slipping away is not the way to go about it. Truce?

Dear Peter Kent:

Given your position on the Board of the far-right “Canadian Coalition for Democracies”:

1) Do you support the CCD’s lobbying for diplomatic and economic ties with the Indian state of Gujurat, where rioters, with government complicity, murdered, raped and dispossessed tens of thousands of Muslims, and where schoolchildren are taught to admire Adolf Hitler?

2) Did you endorse the CCD’s position in favour of firing Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, for chairing a meeting that awarded an Order of Canada to Dr. Henry Morgentaler?

3) Do you believe, with the CCD, that “many” Members of Parliament are “apologists for terrorists who celebrate the killing and maiming of men, women, and children?”

4) If yes, who are these Parliamentarians?

5) Do you endorse the smearing of David Suzuki by your president, Alistair Gordon, and his irresponsible retailing of the anti-environmentalist lie that a DDT ban killed millions in sub-Saharan Africa?

6) As a member of the CCD Board, what role did you play in the attempted character assassination of Liberal MP Omar Alghabra in 2005–for which your organization later had to apologize and retract?

7) Do you believe, with your colleague David Harris, that Muslim terrorists have infiltrated the FBI and CIA, the State Department, the U.S. Muslim military chaplain corps, the White House, Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force, Guantanamo, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons–and in Canada, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Quebec NDP?

8 ) Do you take the view, as your colleague Salim Mansour does, that Canada should walk out of the UN?

9) Do you believe that veiled Muslim women at the polls might be engaging in criminal acts including suicide bombing, as a CCD press release suggests? (Are you aware that the current provisions of the Canada Elections Act permit such women to vote without unveiling, so long as they are not relying on photo ID as proof of identity?)

10) Do you support the bombing of Iran, like your colleague David Harris?

In a way if you look at this election you can see how things come full circle. I often like to talk about the issue with the Liberal from the point of view of their previous Leadership race being a microcosm of what is wrong with the party.

In the leadership race The Liberal party largely made it known that this was going to be the Leadership convention in which the Liberal Party changed. They would elect a new Leadership which was not a product of the old crony isms and patronages.
With this in mind the top candidates were Michael Ignatieff – an outsider to Canadian Politics, Bob Rae – an outsider to Federal politics by many reckonings, and in a distant third Stephen Dion – someone who has held high positions in the Liberal government and Party.

The time comes around and the the various run-ons are done,

-Martha Hall Findlay endorses Stéphan Dion after being Last on the First Ballot
-Ken Dryden Endorses Stéphane Dion after being elimanted on the second ballot
-Gerrard Kennedy endorses Stephen Dion after being eliminated on the 3rd Ballot.

So basically the Liberal Party claims that they are going to change the way things done, and then instead elects Stéphan Dion in a series of back room deals. You know why Dion is such a poor leader? Because he wasn’t chosen based on his merit, he was chosen because of the friends he had.

It proves two things about the Liberal party, which has been proven by their refusal to take down the government, because the polls did not suit them. First the Liberal party is very good at spinning things, but in the end it is all spin and they will continue to previous ways of doing things. Secondly, the Liberal Party stands for absolutely zero principles, other than gaining power.

Someone might ask me, why do I chose to identify myself as a Liberal? Well because I dislike the conservative stance against the rule of law, minority rights, and social responsibility. On the other side I dislike that the NDP really just stands for a number of special interest groups, questionable economics, and basic elitism. Also I like to vote for a party that has a chance of winning.
I used to think the Liberals stood for a balance, for someone like me who often likes moderate views of things. Some call it Blue Liberalism others Red Tory, call it what you want I don’t feel that any party really represents me.

So why even vote?

In previous elections, I provided democraticSPACE with non-partisan analysis, particularly on my home riding of Scarborough—Agincourt in Toronto. My intention was to do the same this election.

In the 2007 Ontario Provincial Election, I ended up endorsing the NDP candidate, Yvette Blackburn. Coming from a strong second-place finish in Windsor West, Yvette moved to Scarborough—Agincourt and ran the most organized campaign by the NDP I had ever seen since this riding was created in 1987. It was so impressive that she drew this non-partisan into the fold. It was on that campaign I met and canvassed with another New Democrat, Stacy Douglas.

Stacy was the NDP’s provincial candidate before Yvette (2003), and was nominated about a year ago as the NDP’s candidate for this 2008 Federal Election. She was also a Masters Student and an accomplished artist providing critical political analysis on her blog, “no time for metaphors.” At the time, I was finishing my Film BFA at York and applying some of my own critical analysis in the blogosphere, here at democraticSPACE and elsewhere.

Finding two strong local candidates all in one day was too good to resist. In addition to supporting Yvette, I committed to help Stacy in the next (this) election.

When Harper started beating his war drums, signaling an immanent election, I contacted the NDP to see how I could help out with the local campaign. I soon found out the timing of the election wasn’t right for Stacy; she had been accepted to do a PhD in England. That’s when local NDPers started throwing around the idea that I should run. I gave it some thought, checked with my family and friends, and when I realized there was enough support to run a credible campaign, I accepted the nomination about as soon as the writ dropped. The transition from Stacy to me was so smooth that I even got registered as a candidate with Elections Canada before Liberal incumbent Jim Karygiannis.

To be honest, this should have been a really innocuous story. You might be wondering if I’m only writing this as some kind of self-indulgent announcement to the blogosphere that I’m running as a New Democrat. I am a little happy, to be sure, although it was my intention to briefly foreground this information in order to make my transition from a non-partisan blogger to an NDP analyst clear to my readers. I never thought this little blip on the election radar would be wrapped up in a smear campaign, originating in the blogosphere and perpetuated by a major local paper, the Scarborough Mirror (Toronto Community News).

What?!? Yeah. Let’s back up to explain that one. The story basically goes like this:

(more…)

Julian West has just dropped out as the NDP candidate in Saanich-Gulf Islands. Since the nomination deadline has already passed, this means the NDP will not be running a candidate in the riding. This is significant as it reduces the split among the anti-Gary Lunn vote, leaving Liberal (but former Green) Briony Penn and Green candidate Andrew Lewis to try and knock off Lunn. You may remember that Andrew Lewis was the top vote-getting Green candidate in 2004, winning almost 17% of the vote.

Peace River is a riding that has worn itself a deep electoral rut, and that rut is in the shape of a capital C.  It doesn’t seem to matter who runs, as long as they run for, as local electors will say flat out and without a trace of humour, the “right” party.  It’s a riding where, as a good friend of mine is known to say, “If you vote, honey, you’re considered progressive”.  And those voters who actually turn out (and that number is increasingly small) mark their “x” in the vast majority for the latest incarnation of the Preston Manning/Stockwell Day/Stephen Harper juggernaut as they do every election, then go home, say their prayers and go to bed.  The likelihood that this election will be any different is low to nonexistent, and the smart money has to be on an easy Conservative win in the riding.

Which is unfortunate.  Because it’s difficult for anyone to argue that Peace River currently has effective representation, or that re-electing the Conservative incumbent Chris Warkentin will do anything to improve the lives of the people he claims to represent.I’m obviously partisan, having run against Warkentin in the last election myself, but the fact is that many local Conservative party members would agree that Warkentin doesn’t represent them. A strong contingent of party faithful threw their support behind surprise independent challenger Bill Given in the last election.  They were upset at the time with the way Warkentin was nominated as the Conservative candidate, and many party insiders felt that his nomination was actually fixed by retiring incumbent Charlie Penson, preventing Grande Prairie councillor Bill Given from having the opportunity to run as a Conservative himself.  Irregularities abounded in the voting process, Given’s supporters claimed, and Warkentin was nominated and confirmed unfairly, apparently for mowing Penson’s lawn enough summers in a row to earn the honour.  Some well-known Conservatives threw their money and support behind Given, even though he insisted he wouldn’t necessarily cross the floor if elected, and they were successful in earning him a second-place finish in the election…which still left him roughly 18,000 votes behind Warkentin.  It’s a mark of how difficult it is to push for change within the riding.  Even Conservatives can’t get a candidate elected if he isn’t branded with the Conservative name.Wrong party, even when it’s no party at all. 

I should point out here that there are very few people who would probably pin the blame for that controversy on Warkentin himself, especially if they have even a basic familiarity with him.  His babyface gamely beams out of every official party photograph with a wet-behind-the-ears innocence that he hasn’t seemed to lose despite his recent (if short) experience in the House.  It’s much easier to picture Warkentin as a freckle-faced kid in a Normal Rockwell painting getting up to nostalgic hijinks, perhaps painting a fence or going to the barbershop, than to picture him in elected office.  The overall impression one gets from Warkentin is still of his youth, and it’s hard to imagine him planning a strategy more devious and political than finding a way to grab Boardwalk in a church-basement game of Monopoly.  He exudes a gosh-darn enthusiasm and an aw-shucks modesty that might be endearing if he wasn’t the person now charged with managing a riding that contains a good chunk of the oil crucial to the Canadian (and North American) economy.  The cynical (and yes, I include myself in that number) might say that Warkentin’s utter lack of confidence, experience, and original thought are the very qualities that make him the perfect Conservative candidate.  If you’re looking for a guy who doesn’t ask questions, who won’t rock the boat, who’ll be quiet (unless you ask him to say something), get the coffee, and fill his extremely safe seat, Warkentin is your man. He’s the perfect sock puppet, a friendly face to soften the often slightly aggressive policies created and advocated by the Harper government (just as one example, a recent pamphlet distributed locally promised that the Conservatives would be hard on crime, and claimed that Liberal policies were so “soft” they practically encouraged criminals to break the law).

This time around, Warkentin is also the incumbent, increasing the likelihood that he’ll win again.  Given hasn’t thrown his hat into the ring for another try yet, and the controversy over Warkentin’s initial nomination seems to have faded away.  The current MP’s only competition for the seat so far comes from the three (interestlingly, all female) candidates running against him: Lilliane Coutu Maisonneuve for the Liberals, Adele Boucher Rymhs for the NDP, and Jennifer Villebrun for the Greens.

Still, with all of them running for the “wrong” parties, it remains to be seen whether any of the new candidates can find a way to jolt the Peace region out of its collective rut.  More likely Warkentin will once again coast smoothly back to Ottawa in the well-worn path of the many Tories who held the seat before him. 

A lot worse today then they were yesterday and yesterday it wasn’t very good…As has been reported on tonight’s The National, the NDP Candidate, Dana Larsen, was sacked today. If you’re interested in the details, I recommend catching a repeat of the show on Newsworld (or CBC if it’s still early where you live). In short, it involved copious amounts of drugs and a video camera. Frankly, Jack Layton didn’t have much of a choice – smoking a little pot is one thing, this was another entirely. On the one hand, I think that this is a loss for the politics of pot (not something near and dear to my heart, but something worth a good debate). On the other hand, it gives the NDP an opportunity to reassess their goals, strengths and weaknesses in the riding. Should they consider a candidate from North or West Vancouver that may grow support at the south end of the riding, while risking some support in their more traditional strength on the Sunshine Coast? Alternatively, they can choose a candidate with connections to unionists in Squamish in the hope of regaining a more traditional voting bloc. Or, they can stick with the status quo and choose a Sunshine Coast resident in the hopes of consolidating their support in the only part of the riding where they have shown consistent strength in the last two elections.

My feeling is that if the NDP want to stay relevent in the riding, a task which may be difficult anyway given three legitimate (if uninspiring) candidates now with almost a two week head start, they should choose the latter option. This election does not seem to be fertile ground for NDP gains in this riding (they never do, really – the big NDP gains in West Van – Sunshine Coast – STSC during the 2004 election are attributable to new boundaries). The NDP need a strong local (to the Sunshine Coast) candidate to maintain a foothold until next time. Even a strong candidate at this point would be hard pressed to maintain the 20% that the NDP managed in both 2004 and 2006. So, where do these freed votes go?

Angela Reid, Green Party Candidate in Kelowna Lake Country has been planning on running in the Kelowna municipal election since November 2007.  Reid will be participating in both races this time around.

Reid ran for the federal Green Party the last time out and hadn’t planned on being the candidate this year due to family priorities.  In an email exchange Reid says her reasons for deciding to add the federal race to her schedule was to make sure there was a qualified prepared candidate running for the Greens in Okanagan Lake Country and she didn’t want to let area voters down. Reid is well known locally for championing green issues and runs a green consulting company.

Once the federal election is done, Reid will return her focus to the local municipal election where three of seven council seats have been vacated, “…I will do my best to represent Green Party policy and raise more awareness about our platform that covers a broad range of issues.  I will then apply the same kind of long-term. logical, sustainable approach to my municipal campaign.”

 As a City Kelowna is in the midst of revising the Official Community Plan with an eye to sustainability, the plan is called”2020 Greening our Future.” Perennial environmental issues here include rapid development and water scarcity.

Sault Ste. Marie’s Liberal candidate Paul Bichler obviously learned nothing about his party’s beer & popcorn moment during the last election. Bichler was parachuted in as an ‘all star candidate’ to knock off NDP incumbent Tony Martin. Local voters generally view Tony as “a nice guy,” but nowhere as effective in bringing money to the riding as his provincial counterpart Liberal MPP David Orazietti.

In responding descriptions of Tony as a nice guy, Bichler states: “I also had a nice guy serving me breakfast this morning. I don’t want him representing me in Ottawa.”

I’ve worked both American and Canadian campaigns as a communications strategist. I learned long ago not to let the rough and tumble of politics bother me personally. But I’m offended by Bichler’s comment.

During high school, I worked counter as a McDonald’s food server to help pay for university. The same with my wife. So did most of our friends at one time or another. It is good honest work (Which is why I would trust a server in political officer before I trusted a politician involved in Adscam to serve me breakfast). Serving food is something to which I and about half the population can relate. So branding Tony a food server actually works… for Tony. In contrast, few Canadians have experienced the perks of being elected a Liberal politicians, whose superiority Bichler is asserting over mere food servers.

Three years’ ago, I ran the communications strategy for Ken Walker, the local Conservative candidate. The first rule I instituted on Ken’s campaign was the following: “Never insult waiters/ waitresses, taxi drivers, or barbers/ hair dressers.” There’s lots of them within our community, and their job entails listening all day to people talk. I often find people working these trades more accurate political predictors than pollsters and political scientists.

The second rule follows closely: “Always tip them 10 percent more than expected.” Simply put, because they talk to people all day, you want them to carry a favorable impression (and hence talk favorably) about your candidate.

The third rule in our working-class riding became, once uttered: “Hammer home the beer & popcorn comment.” This was key to stopping the Liberals last time around, because it showed the smug disconnect between their leaders and the people they governed.

The NDP has selected former city councillor  Rick Downes as candidate. Downes ran in the 2007 provincial election. Downes was a three-term city councillor for King’s Town district before coming within 700 votes of Mayor in 2006. In 2007 he was the provincial NDP candidate for Kingston & the Islands New Democrats, winning 22% of the vote. The party is asking people to re-use signs from the 2007 campaign.  Eric Walton is the Green Party candidate and party signs are up. From 1986 to 1994  Walton was a founding member and the part-time agency director of the Kingston Environmental Action Project (KEAP).  He is the Green Party of Canada shadow cabinet critic/advocate for international affairs.  Liberal speaker of the house Peter  Milliken will face off this year against Brian Abrams, a Kingston lawyer with Templeman Menninga who spent 18 years as an RCMP officer before being called to the bar. According to a Milliken news release “Abrams represents fresh blood for the local Tories, and hopes to tap into the Red Tory sentiment that made Kingston a federal Conservative stronghold in the 1970s and 1980s, in the days of Flora MacDonald.”

The Conservatives were first out with their signs, the Liberals soon followed. The Bloc got out of the blocks only on Friday, while the supposed NDP candidate is apparently on vacation in Lebanon. The St.Laurent News Sept.13 edition had the three known candidates’ pictures on the cover with a big question mark under the NDP (I guess no vacation shots were available.) It referred readers to pages 4-7 for stories on the candidates.Page 4: Headline “One less candidate in Dion’s way” with 1/6 page picture of Dion.Page 5: Same article as page 4 but in French. Editor’s column about “… commitment to show huge concern for equity and objectivity”.Page 6: Headline in French “Stephane Dion presents his Quebec team”, 1/6 page picture of Dion and team.Page 7: English version of 1) article on page 6 2) editor’s column on page 5, plus picture of Dion.Score: Dion 4, opponents 0.Special mention for objectivity to St.Laurent News.This is Dion’s riding to lose. Except for 1984 Conservative sweep (and even then riding boundaries were different) it has been a Liberal stronghold. He won last time with over 50% of the vote.So far no contact from any campaign (calls, mailings, etc.)

Thornhill may not turn out to be much of a race. Afterall Liberal Susan Kadis won the elections in 2006 and 2008 by margins of approximately 10,000 votes. Conservatives are going with former journalist Peter Kent who is likely the Tories’ highest profile candidate in the Toronto area.

A member of the Green Party for over three years, candidate Norbert Koehl won the nomination contest over the previous election’s Green Party candidate to earn his first spot on the ballot, while NDP candidate and president of the Thornhill NDP riding association, Simon Strlchik gets his second chance to represent Thornhill in Ottawa.In the past 2 elections the NDP received about 7% of the votes and the Green Party only 3%.
The riding has one of the highest average family incomes in the country at over $100,000 and close to 50% of the riding is Jewish. In the past Jewish voters in the riding have affected the outcome in elections. The 2007 Ontario election saw the Conservative go down to defeat over the issue of public funding for private religious schools. However in Thornhill Conservative Peter Shurman beat the incumbent, Mario Racco as a result of the school funding issue. So you will see lots of pandering to Jewish voters during the campaign.

With the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah three weeks away, greeting cards from the prime minister began arriving this week, bringing with them the same sort of questions that accompanied last year’s mailout. However, there was some displeasure from the community on the choice of the election date. It falls on the Jewish holiday, Sukkot. Meanwhile Susan Kadis had introduced Bill C-547 in the spring which if passed would create a Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. Around the same time Harper’s Jewish New Years cards were arriving at home in the riding, so were cards from Kadis asking whether residents supported Bill C-547.

Susan Kadis has been an elected representative in Thornhill since 1988 when she was elected as a school trustee. She moved on to Vaughan council in 1997 and Parliament in 2004. Peter Kent ran for the Conservatives in 2004 in the Toronto riding of St. Paul’s where he lost to Liberal Carolyn Bennett by 13,000 votes. There has been some grumbling about Kent’s residency. He had bought an historic home in Markham 2 years ago but he didn’t actually move in until the past August after some lengthy renovations.

Why is West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast an important riding in this election? Well, because it’s one of those “swing” ridings, that every news agency in Canada is keeping tabs on in the majority yes or no sweepstakes. However, what marks West Vancouver apart is that its incumbent MP is running for the Green Party. In the coming days what you will find here is a profile of each of the major local campaigns and the impact of the national campaigns. In the meantime, a brief thought on Blair Wilson joining the Greens (only two weeks after the fact, but still moderately imporant)…

For those of you unfamiliar with Blair Wilson and wondering if he offers the Greens a shot of winning the riding, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Realistically, he may offer a top result for the Greens nationally, but there’s a reason the Liberals didn’t want him back after questions about this election financing and personal finances came to light. Despite being cleared of serious allegations, the damage had been done. The story was played to death in the local media and the history of Blair Wilson is now common knowledge across the Lower Mainland and his short term political career at a very likely end. However, that is not to say that the Green Party and Blair Wilson are a bad marriage, quite the contrary in fact. Wilson has already paid a small dividend, given his part in getting the Green’s into the debate (though, Jack Layton is deserving of some thanks for that too).

The medium-long term benefit, though, may be much greater. In Eastern Canada, where this story has never been ‘water cooler talk’, he offers some legitimacy to the party as a sitting(albeit for a week) Green member of parliament. Combined with participation in the debates, this has the potential to offer the Greens more votes across the country which, in turn, means more federal funding. For a party the size of the Greens, that’s important. For Wilson, it offers a better funded campaign and a built-in base from which to start and grow. Expect a much stronger Green result than in 2006 – though Blair, quick piece of advice, don’t use water soluble markers for your ‘authorized by’ lines on your campaign signs, it’s Vancouver, it gets wet here.

What I’m trying to say is that despite only sitting for a week as a Green member, Blair Wilson may have provided his new party, at least in part, with the means for their long-awaited breakthrough next time around – because this time it seems dubious, not impossible, much stranger things have happened. Though even if all he does is help get the Greens into the debate, that’s a legacy that goes well beyond anything he was able to do in the Liberal cuacus. In the meantime, however, his candidacy means that West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country is John Weston’s and the Conservatives to lose, but more on that next time.

Before I go, I would like to express my best wishes for a speedy recovery to Liberal incumbent Don Bell of North Vancouver. On Monday September 8th he suffered a heart attack and though he was released from hospital Friday the 12th, the campaign trail is not the ideal place to get healthy again. Here’s to a speedy recovery.

NDP last to select candidate — this evening. Peter Milliken, speaker of the house, for the Liberals and Abrahms for the Conservatives have been selected to run. Tory signs widespread in city. Others yet to show.

More after this evening.