Yesterday, Bill Graham announced that he would resign his House of Commons seat on July 2. Today, Jim Peterson announced that he would resign his House of Commons seat on July 12. I’m guessing that both these parliamentary veterans were asked to resign to make way for Bob Rae and Martha Hall Findlay to run in by-elections. But my concern is that the Liberals could lose one or both of these by-elections to the Conservatives. I’m particularly concerned about Willowdale, where the Conservatives got 29% to the Liberals’ 55%. In Toronto Centre I am concerned that the riding could go something other than Liberal because of continuing dislike of Bob Rae. The Liberals want all Liberal Leadership candidates to be in the House of Commons. There were initially 11 leadership candidates, 8 of which were MPs. 3 candidates, MPs Carolyn Bennett, Maurizio Bevilacqua, and Hedy Fry all dropped out prior to “Super Weekend” and all endorsed Bob Rae. MP John Godfrey was briefly in the Leadership race as well but dropped out in April 2006 before the race really started for health reasons. He did however participate in a leadership race debate in April 2006 and did well at it. It is therefore sad that after such a great start, health had to make Mr. Godfrey drop out. While I expect Godfrey could have been a great leader, he was born in December 1942. No offence to the exemplary Mr. Godfrey, but a younger leader may well have been needed to be able to take on Stephen Harper and form a future government. Not to say that Godfrey too would not have been capable of this, I’m just saying that someone younger may, I stress, may, have been a better choice. Mr. Godfrey also later endorsed Bob Rae.
There were 3 leadership candidates who were not MPs. They were Gerard Kennedy (my candidate!), Bob Rae, and Martha Hall Findlay. Kennedy is a former Ontario MPP and former Ontario education minister. Rae is a former Ontario MPP and a former NDP Ontario Premier. Rae left the NDP in 2002 over it’s rejection of free market capitalism (he referenced outgoing UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as an example of someone who has praised free markets) and over it’s lack of support for Israel. Bob Rae’s wife is Jewish. Rae is also of Jewish decent although he was raised an Anglican. Some say Rae was the first Jewish Premier of Ontario. After leaving the NDP, Rae slowly drifted his affiliation to the Liberals. In 2006, Rae decided he wanted to seek the federal Liberal leadership. He eventually lost to Stephane Dion. I followed Kennedy’s lead and endorsed Stephane Dion when Kennedy dropped out of the ballot. Rae was also an NDP MP from late 1978 to 1982 when he quit in order to become leader of the provincial NDP. The third leadership candidate who was not an MP was Martha Hall Findlay. She has never held elected office but came close to beating Belinda Stronach in 2004 when Stronach was a Conservative. In the leadership race, Hall Findlay was first to be eliminated and she endorsed Dion. Rae released his delegates and did not endorse either of the two remaining candidates, Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Ever since the leadership race has been over, the Liberals have wanted the 3 non-MP candidates to become MPs in order for there to be a stronger front against Stephen Harper’s government. But now that the next election might not be until 2009, these 3 politicians likely have started to become impatient about being on the sidelines and possibly remaining on the sidelines for a whole another 2 years before they can run in a general election. It is for this reason that I think the two retiring Liberal incumbents were asked to retire early to allow an earlier chance to get the seatless leadership candidates to enter Parliament in by-elections. Rae and Hall Findlay were already nominated in their respective ridings for the next general election. I expect that the two retiring political veterans obliged because they did not want to have to wait around another two years before being able to retire. Both Peterson and Graham announced their retirement at a time that a spring election was expected. I don’t think they were planning on the seemingly inevitable election to fizzle. Graham and Peterson likely were expecting Parliament to be dissolved this spring. I doubt either was betting on the Parliament lasting another two years as now seems probable. It is for this reason I think that both have just announced their resignation to allow for an early retirement and thus some new blood to be elected in their place.
Unfortunately this all leaves out my guy Gerard Kennedy. Under this current plan Kennedy remains on the sidelines until the next election which could be another two years. Kennedy decided to run in his old provincial riding of Parkdale-High Park against NDP incumbent Peggy Nash. I’m glad Kennedy is running there as he is just about the only one who could win this increasingly NDP riding back for the Liberals. However, this leaves Kennedy out until the next general election unless another seat opens up and Kennedy opts to run there instead. It previously seemed like a good seat for Kennedy to run in was York South-Weston. After all Kennedy represented much of the riding from 1996-1999. However this was based on the assumption that Alan Tonks (who was born in 1943) would retire. Since then Tonks has, however, committed to running again so the seat is not becoming vacated. This is on top of the fact that there are now doubts about how safe the seat is on the federal level given the recent NDP victory in the provincial York South-Weston seat. So I’m sad to say that for now my guy Gerard Kennedy is stuck out of Parliament.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Rural Eastern Ontario ridings
I miss the riding of Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington because it returned Liberals in all federal and provincial elections in which it existed as a riding from 1993 onwards. In 1988 the Liberals could have won the riding had there been more strategic voting. The Tories won it by only 868 votes. If several thousand of the 7000 NDP voters had voted strategically Liberal, the Liberals could have won the seat. In 1993, the Liberals won the seat in a landslide. In 1997, and 2000, Liberal Larry McCormick won the riding both times by a comfortable margin but with only 39% of the vote. In 1997, he won the riding by a large 6000 votes yet with only 39%. In 2000, the Alliance candidate did well enough to receive 30% of the vote to McCormick’s 39%, closing the gap somewhat and the Liberals being victorious by a reduced margin of 3769 votes. In this riding it was the PCs and the Reform/Alliance who split the vote and allowed the Liberals to win. The PC candidate was Daryl Kramp in 1997 and 2000, who is now a Tory MP for the neighbouring Prince Edward—Hastings riding. He claims to be a Red Tory but has never voted in parliament like a Red Tory so is in my opinion much like any other Conservative. I believe that even in 2000 with a Red Tory leader Joe Clark, the votes for the PC candidate Kramp were mostly Conservative minded voters who would have moved and eventually did move to the new Conservative party in 2004. This is unlike in more left-leaning ridings where 1 Alliance vote plus 1 PC vote did not equal 2 Conservative votes because a number of the PC votes were more Red Tory-oriented votes. It was in ridings like Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington that a true vote split did exist in the 2000 election. I however think that indeed in many ridings the vote splitting issue in 2000 did not have as big an effect on the final outcome as Conservatives claim. Clark after all was a Red Tory and if you look closely at the results of the 2004 election you will see approximately half, give or take, of the PC votes of the 2000 election moving to the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party only lost ground overall in 2004 because of a surge in support for both the Bloc and NDP. Without the NDP and Bloc surge, the Liberals could have clearly won another majority government even with a United Right. By that same token, as much as Conservative supporters do not want to hear this, the optics of the 2000 election mean that the Liberals could have won a majority government against a United Right had that United Right been led by Stockwell Day or some other Alliance type possibly even including Stephen Harper. Such a United Right would have taken at most around half of what went to the PCs (as the 2004 election shows) due to this right-wing party being unable to have broad appeal because of it’s right wing policies due to it being led by an Alliance-type leader. The result would have been a smaller Liberal majority government but a majority government nevertheless. Even in Ontario ridings in 2000 with a technical vote split, many would have gone Liberal because even a small amount of the PC vote going Liberal would have enabled the Liberal candidate to beat the united Conservatives. I know it pains Conservatives to hear this, but I suspect the 2000 election results with a United Right would likely have looked approximately something like this:
Liberal: 46%
United Right/Conservative: 32%
Bloc Quebecois: 11%
NDP: 9%
Such a result almost certainly would have produced a Liberal majority against a United Right.
Unfortunately, any pretense of ever winning back the rural Frontenac/Lennox and Addington riding are gone now that it has been redistributed to include much of the very, very Conservative Lanark County. Lanark County’s conservatism greatly overshadows any moderation that exists in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington and makes the riding one of the safest Tory seats in the country outside Alberta with no hope of the Liberals winning the riding ever in the foreseeable future.
This unfortunate product of redistribution also negatively affects two Eastern Ontario ridings at the provincial level. That same redistributed Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington riding and the modified Prince Edward-Hastings riding in essence have neither of their respective Liberal incumbents running in the riding again. Ernie Parsons of Prince Edward-Hastings is for some reason not running again after only two terms in the legislature even though Parsons is only 61. Although the modified riding now includes conservative northern Hastings that was previously part of the other riding, the redistributed results still have the Liberals easily winning the riding by over 10,000 votes. What this indicates to me is that although northern Hastings is normally very conservative, Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington’s incumbent Leona Dombrowsky (who hails from the northern Hastings part of her current riding) has enough personal popularity in northern Hastings that she was able to win the Hastings part of the riding that the Liberals came third in in 1997 and in which the Liberals came second to the Alliance in 2000. It is presumably for this reason that Dombrowsky is moving over and running in the now vacated Prince Edward-Hastings and leaving Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington to some unnamed Liberal candidate. I only hope that Ernie is retiring on his own and didn’t retire only due to the threat of a nomination challenge from the sitting Minister Dombrowsky. Perhaps Dombrowsky did not want to run in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington because she thought she might lose. Although the Liberals narrowly won in the redistributed results, I expect the results were too close to give Dombrowsky much comfort. As a result I suspect she took advantage of the incumbent retiring in Prince Edward-Hastings to run in a seat that contains part of her old riding and in which she has a better chance of winning than in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington. The unfortunate part of this is that now Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington will almost certainly be won by the right-wing Tory candidate now running in it because there is no Liberal incumbent running in the riding.
On a related note, Dombrowsky was first elected in her seat in 1999 in what was supposed to be a safe Tory seat. Pundits and commentators, however, failed to realize that that riding contained dissatisfaction with the Harris government DESPITE being a rural riding. The result was that Dombrowsky was able to unexpectedly beat the incumbent Tory candidate and became the MPP. Both times Dombrowsky ran, she outpolled her federal Liberal counterpart Larry McCormick. In fact, the provincial Liberals have outpolled the federal Liberals in many rural parts of the province in both 1999 and 2003. If the Liberals want to be re-elected in 2007, they need to again outpoll the federal Liberals in these rural areas and indeed have to win some seats that are held by the federal Tories. I’m worried that a recent bill the Liberals passed may make this harder. A recent Bill that amended the election act included amendments to make it so that the political affiliation of each candidate is listed directly on the ballot rather than on a piece of paper near the ballot box. I’m concerned that this will hurt the Liberals in anti-federal Liberal ridings like Elgin-Middlesex-London that have a popular provincial Liberal incumbent for voters to see the name “Liberal” on the ballot. I’m concerned this will disincline people to personally support the popular Liberal incumbent and instead to vote Conservative as no doubt many of them would in a federal election. I don’t know why the Liberals made this change to the law when it could make it harder for them to win re-election.
I’ve mentioned several of these rural ridings. Another one to watch is Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry. This riding has swung sharply to the federal Tories in the last two federal elections. Although this riding was only narrowly won by the Liberals in 1999, in 2003 the Liberals easily won the riding with a new Liberal candidate. However, the Tories did get a slightly above-average showing. This newly elected Liberal from 2003, Jim Brownell, I hear is very personally popular. Although Mayor of Cornwall since 2006, the 2004 Liberal incumbent Bob Kilger was in 2004 not that personally popular. This, combined with the social conservatism of the region, made Kilger lose his seat. In my estimation, Brownell has more personal popularity than Kilger did at the time. It is because of this that Brownell has a chance to win the riding for the provincial Liberals even though the seat has swung so sharply to the Tories at the federal level. It is these ridings that the Conservatives hold at the federal level that it is vital that the Liberals win if they want to win another majority government.
Liberal: 46%
United Right/Conservative: 32%
Bloc Quebecois: 11%
NDP: 9%
Such a result almost certainly would have produced a Liberal majority against a United Right.
Unfortunately, any pretense of ever winning back the rural Frontenac/Lennox and Addington riding are gone now that it has been redistributed to include much of the very, very Conservative Lanark County. Lanark County’s conservatism greatly overshadows any moderation that exists in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington and makes the riding one of the safest Tory seats in the country outside Alberta with no hope of the Liberals winning the riding ever in the foreseeable future.
This unfortunate product of redistribution also negatively affects two Eastern Ontario ridings at the provincial level. That same redistributed Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington riding and the modified Prince Edward-Hastings riding in essence have neither of their respective Liberal incumbents running in the riding again. Ernie Parsons of Prince Edward-Hastings is for some reason not running again after only two terms in the legislature even though Parsons is only 61. Although the modified riding now includes conservative northern Hastings that was previously part of the other riding, the redistributed results still have the Liberals easily winning the riding by over 10,000 votes. What this indicates to me is that although northern Hastings is normally very conservative, Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington’s incumbent Leona Dombrowsky (who hails from the northern Hastings part of her current riding) has enough personal popularity in northern Hastings that she was able to win the Hastings part of the riding that the Liberals came third in in 1997 and in which the Liberals came second to the Alliance in 2000. It is presumably for this reason that Dombrowsky is moving over and running in the now vacated Prince Edward-Hastings and leaving Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington to some unnamed Liberal candidate. I only hope that Ernie is retiring on his own and didn’t retire only due to the threat of a nomination challenge from the sitting Minister Dombrowsky. Perhaps Dombrowsky did not want to run in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington because she thought she might lose. Although the Liberals narrowly won in the redistributed results, I expect the results were too close to give Dombrowsky much comfort. As a result I suspect she took advantage of the incumbent retiring in Prince Edward-Hastings to run in a seat that contains part of her old riding and in which she has a better chance of winning than in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington. The unfortunate part of this is that now Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington will almost certainly be won by the right-wing Tory candidate now running in it because there is no Liberal incumbent running in the riding.
On a related note, Dombrowsky was first elected in her seat in 1999 in what was supposed to be a safe Tory seat. Pundits and commentators, however, failed to realize that that riding contained dissatisfaction with the Harris government DESPITE being a rural riding. The result was that Dombrowsky was able to unexpectedly beat the incumbent Tory candidate and became the MPP. Both times Dombrowsky ran, she outpolled her federal Liberal counterpart Larry McCormick. In fact, the provincial Liberals have outpolled the federal Liberals in many rural parts of the province in both 1999 and 2003. If the Liberals want to be re-elected in 2007, they need to again outpoll the federal Liberals in these rural areas and indeed have to win some seats that are held by the federal Tories. I’m worried that a recent bill the Liberals passed may make this harder. A recent Bill that amended the election act included amendments to make it so that the political affiliation of each candidate is listed directly on the ballot rather than on a piece of paper near the ballot box. I’m concerned that this will hurt the Liberals in anti-federal Liberal ridings like Elgin-Middlesex-London that have a popular provincial Liberal incumbent for voters to see the name “Liberal” on the ballot. I’m concerned this will disincline people to personally support the popular Liberal incumbent and instead to vote Conservative as no doubt many of them would in a federal election. I don’t know why the Liberals made this change to the law when it could make it harder for them to win re-election.
I’ve mentioned several of these rural ridings. Another one to watch is Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry. This riding has swung sharply to the federal Tories in the last two federal elections. Although this riding was only narrowly won by the Liberals in 1999, in 2003 the Liberals easily won the riding with a new Liberal candidate. However, the Tories did get a slightly above-average showing. This newly elected Liberal from 2003, Jim Brownell, I hear is very personally popular. Although Mayor of Cornwall since 2006, the 2004 Liberal incumbent Bob Kilger was in 2004 not that personally popular. This, combined with the social conservatism of the region, made Kilger lose his seat. In my estimation, Brownell has more personal popularity than Kilger did at the time. It is because of this that Brownell has a chance to win the riding for the provincial Liberals even though the seat has swung so sharply to the Tories at the federal level. It is these ridings that the Conservatives hold at the federal level that it is vital that the Liberals win if they want to win another majority government.
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