Mid-Week Musings
1. The NDP have a well produced ad up on their site which they are asking donations for to air. ABCer picks up the many obvious contradictions in their plea to air it.
2. Martha Hall Findlay has been appointed in Willowdale. I'm not principally opposed to appointments (of qualified people), but it seems to me like Martha could have won the nomination herself.
3. Bill Blaikie has announced he's calling it quits. His riding has been strongly NDP in the past but it just might be in play now. It kind of sucks for the NDP to lose Bill Blaikie while Pat Martin stays around.
4. Closer to home, Anne McLellan's old riding, Edmonton Centre will be having their nomination meeting next week. Running for that one are Nicole Martel, Don Padgett, and Jim Wachowich. The other hotly contested one is Edmonton Strathcona which now appears to be between Toeffal Chowdry and Claudette Roy (who would make a very strong candidate given her background). Apologies to the prospective candidates for butchering the spelling of at least half of those names, I'm sure.
5. Looks like those out West will need to scour US sites on the net for early election results again next time, as the Supreme Court upholds the publication ban.
6. Ed Stelmach has already flip-flopped on his hypothetical support of the new equalization formula. Best line of the article?
7. People are still all a tizzy over Mario Dumont's debate stunt. Apparently 1.7 million people watched the debate which, considering Quebec's population, is quite remarkable.
2. Martha Hall Findlay has been appointed in Willowdale. I'm not principally opposed to appointments (of qualified people), but it seems to me like Martha could have won the nomination herself.
3. Bill Blaikie has announced he's calling it quits. His riding has been strongly NDP in the past but it just might be in play now. It kind of sucks for the NDP to lose Bill Blaikie while Pat Martin stays around.
4. Closer to home, Anne McLellan's old riding, Edmonton Centre will be having their nomination meeting next week. Running for that one are Nicole Martel, Don Padgett, and Jim Wachowich. The other hotly contested one is Edmonton Strathcona which now appears to be between Toeffal Chowdry and Claudette Roy (who would make a very strong candidate given her background). Apologies to the prospective candidates for butchering the spelling of at least half of those names, I'm sure.
5. Looks like those out West will need to scour US sites on the net for early election results again next time, as the Supreme Court upholds the publication ban.
6. Ed Stelmach has already flip-flopped on his hypothetical support of the new equalization formula. Best line of the article?
[PC spokesperson Tom] Olsen said he wasn't "sure what [Finance] Minister Oberg was talking about."
7. People are still all a tizzy over Mario Dumont's debate stunt. Apparently 1.7 million people watched the debate which, considering Quebec's population, is quite remarkable.
Labels: Ed Stelmach, Martha Hall Findlay, News, Nominations, Quebec election
posted by calgarygrit at
12:14 a.m.
13 Comments:
Funny thing.
I was going to watch Tuesday's game at Prime Time (a local dive bar with lots of TVs in Montreal's Mile End) and on the way there, I remarked that I wasn't going to be able to watch the debates, because the chances of people watching talking heads in a sports bar were exactly nil. Or so I thought. We get there, and lo and behold, a small crowd (equal to the hockey watchers) has gathered around one of the TVs, and Mario Dumont and Andre Boisclair are competing for air molecules with Jacques Demers and the Habs and the Islanders. It was a cacaphonic mix: health care cooperatives... ryder recovers the rebound... highway memo... Kostitsyn behind the back pass... jowly look from Charest... goooooaaaaal. Beauty.
It's true: Quebec has two official sports.
By
dru, at 2:53 p.m.
Bill Blaikie: a real asset to the NDP.
He was the leader they SHOULD have chosen. He's in touch with the common man, and one of the most sincere members of their party. He's one of the few MPs the NDP wouldn't be better off without.
By
Robert Vollman, at 4:27 p.m.
In response to dru: Great comment, but those are religions, NOT sports!
By
Sinestra, at 6:22 p.m.
I would disagree with most that say that Elmwood Transcona is an NDP riding it was a Bill Blaikie riding. The man was an icon and evolved into social institution doing little in terms of constituency work or being seen publicly in the last while and his ideological divide with present flip flop Jack has taken a toll. He is a true parliamentarian but also a died in the wool ideological proponent of state interventionsismt. We, the Liberals came within a hundred votes in 1993 with a popular area school principal by the name of Ron Miki. If we had of taken workers from Duhamel and Axworthy we would have won Transcona. We need a popular young women like say Erin Romeo or a stronger left leaning voice like David Northcott and that riding is Liberal. A poll by poll counts gives the Liberal Party a good chance should we get present a good quality candidate and get our act together.
By
Browners Blog, at 8:49 p.m.
The Liberals came in third in Elmwood-Transcona in 2006, and Blaikie has weathered all the NDP's ups and downs for almost thirty years.
Note: the Liberals won't be defeating the Conservatives anytime soon by targeting NDP-held ridings.
By
JG, at 9:01 p.m.
To browners blog
I admire your optimism regarding Liberal chances in this riding without Blaikie. But, considering that in 2006 they were further behind the CPC candidate (6,618 votes) than the CPC candidate was behind Blaikie (6,247 votes), it would seem that the CPC has a better chance of taking it away from the NDP than the Grits.
By
Brian in Calgary, at 9:03 p.m.
"the Liberals won't be defeating the Conservatives anytime soon by targeting NDP-held ridings."
Isn't that how they won in 2004?
By
Robert Vollman, at 12:05 p.m.
I was kinda hoping that the longer Martha goes without an appointment, the more likely it would be that she'd be running in Newmarket-Aurora.
Stronach seems to be off in the woodwork somewhere and I figured/hoped she was exercising her ususal abbreviated commitment to a cause and finding something else to do with her time other than wasting everyone elses.
By
Dr. Strangelove, at 12:23 p.m.
Manitoba Liberal, Thank you for correcting me on Art as opposed to Ron Miki. However, I do not belive the anti Mulroney was the biggest momentum in the riding. Having gone door to door with Art his profile in congruence with our National campaign were the higher impact on voting behaviours. 2006 ewas anomaly as it was a last minute candidate compared to the cultivation and recruitment the ERC team put into Art. You have to be joking on Lubosch he did nothing while on council(other than get his MBA at taxpayers expense) and has significant "negatives" on voting behaviours - if you talk to the present Councillor for North Kildonan.
Now to the argument of targeting NDP held ridings - no the Liberal Party will be putting on a "308 Seat Strategy" and Elmwood Transcona is a part of that.
The fact that the Tories did so well is due to their spending time and money on Linda West as she is also running Provinically in Radisson. If they did not pick up momentum I would be concerned and then say it ws ideologically an NDP seat . They picked up as can we but I firmly bvelieve we need a person like Erin Romeo a young wordsmith with significant local sports and community ties and a real desire to change our world. Shelley Wiseman also comes to mind as she is from the area is on a dozen or so non profit boards, govenement smart and has media savvy.
Us Libs coming in with a New Generation Rep combined with the Labour vote, Gender vote and a new sense of beginning (since 1979 Blaikie has been there) and my optimism is in fact realistic.
By
Browners Blog, at 2:08 p.m.
Between the "308 seat strategy" bit and the seeming assurance you have that the Liberals will win a riding where they finished a distant third in the last election, and I'd wonder how "realistic" that optimism is.
Guess I'll look forward to seeing how the Liberals execute their plan to win Crowfoot, Wild Rose and Calgary Southwest ;)
Anyway, Blakie's coattails alone should be enough to keep his riding in the NDP column.
As for Dumont's debate performance (which I don't think was as bad as the English-Canadian consensus seems to say)...I belive Dan has made another topic with respect to that subject ;)
By
daniel, at 7:25 p.m.
I doubt the Liberals will win Elmwood-Transcona. In fact if the Liberals do really well here, it could potentially allow the Tories to slip up the middle (they got 32% last time around and due to Bill Blaikie's popularity, they can probably go up a few percentage points), so if the Liberals ignore the riding, then the NDP should easily hold it as this is not a right wing riding, but has enough right wingers for the Tories to potentially slip up the middle. It is a lot like Oshawa down east or New Westminster-Coquitlam out West which are both ridings that went Conservative in 2004 despite not being right wing ridings.
By
Monkey Loves to Fight, at 4:17 p.m.
As a resident of Elmwood-Transcona, I can echo the sentiments that Bill Blaikie became an institution. And I also agree that if the Liberal riding association does not get in gear, we will be writing this off another lost opportunity. Though, I wonder if Blaikie will play a role in the campaign of his NDP successor? If that's the case, then I think that we can call it the beginning of the new era of NDP in Elmwood-Transcona.
By
the omniscient one, at 4:26 p.m.
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mmjiaxin, at 8:01 p.m.
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