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 Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:29 am Post subject: Toronto Danforth By-Election: March 19th 2012 |
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| Quote: | Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called a byelection for March 12 in Toronto-Danforth riding of the late NDP leader Jack Layton.
The byelection will be held just two weeks before the NDP holds its convention on March 24 in Toronto to select a new party leader, who will succeed interim leader Nycole Turmel.
The eight candidates vying for the position are Niki Ashton, Nathan Cullen, Paul Dewar,Thomas Mulcair, Peggy Nash, Romeo Saganash, Martin Singh and Brian Topp.
NDP members living in the Toronto riding east of the downtown core chose law professor Craig Scott to replace Layton as the party's candidate three weeks ago.
Also on Sunday, the Conservative Party announced communications consultant Andrew Keyes as its candidate in the riding.
Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu was selected as the Green Party candidate at a nomination meeting on Sunday afternoon.
The Liberal Party has not held its nomination meeting yet |
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politic.....ction.html
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| Quote: | Voters in Toronto-Danforth will be going to the polls a week later than they thought because of an error made by the Prime Minister's Office.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had announced on Sunday that the byelection in former NDP leader Jack Layton's riding would be held March 12.
But a new press release issued on Monday said voters there would go to the polls on March 19 instead. |
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politic.....ction.html
Last edited by cosmostein on Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:34 am Post subject: |
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As suspected the Tories have run a sacrificial lamb, Andrew Keyes seems like a nice enough guy but is far to low profile and unknown to be any sort of factor in a riding the Tories didn't have a chance in anyway.
This is shaping up to be a battle between the Liberals and New Democrats.
The NDP opted to run someone I had to google in Craig Scott, as I had never heard of him and the Liberals are yet to hold a nomination meeting.
The fact that this by-election is taking place 12 days before the NDP selects a new leader makes this election a potential momentum changer if the Liberals can snag it. |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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The Liberals seem to have screwed this one up. Unless they get a strong well known candidate I don't think they have a chance anymore. Had they opted to run a lesser known, like Grant Gordon who has come forward, and nominate them in November I think they could have had a strong showing. Now the byelection has been called, the NDP have been campaigning for weeks, and they still don't have someone in place. I also don't know how parachuting a high profile candidate into the riding will appeal to people over a local candidate. Though they did say they would be parachuting a candidate into the riding so I guess we'll see if they go back on that.
Liberals not seem to care about the ground war in ridings. They voted down the government last March, and eventhough their was election speculation for months and we were in a minority government they still had many ridings without candidates in place. They had safe seats, like Scarborough Rouge River, where their incumbent opted not to run once the election was called, and that wasn't the only riding that happened in. I don't understand how dumb your leader or campaign team would have to be to not know the intentions of every MP, unless people like Derek Lee are just selfish idiots who believe the constituents in his former riding will only vote Liberal. While Ignatieff was a horrible leader the whole party should be blamed for being unable to run a campaign.
We spoke about this in the other thread and now that I think about it more, how does Peter Fonseca lose his seat? He won 50%+ of the vote provincially in 2007 and loses in 2011. Either he was a bad MPP or he just believed people were entitled to vote for him and there was no need to work his ass off for every vote. Of course he made have done that but it seems unlikely. Martha Hall Findlay is another person who should have never lost. Sometimes you get screwed up by other national factors, which was the case in Montreal or even in St. John's South Mount Pearl, but I think many times it is the horrible leadership in the groundwar.
To be successful parties should work their asses off in every riding, which was something the Liberals were told to do by some Obama guy at their convention. While the Conservstives knew they would have a tough time winning over Newfoundland and Labrador again they still managed to nominate strong candidates in every riding. Harper managed to get former cabinet ministers in Danny Williams' government to run in ridings they didn't have a shot in, which is quite remarkable in my mind. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:42 am Post subject: |
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Liberals are clearly punting
| Quote: | DATE OF MEETING: Thursday, February 9th, 2012
STARTING TIME: 7:00 p.m.
MUNICIPAL ADDRESS: Riverdale Collegiate Institute
1094 Gerrard Street East
Voting will commence immediately following speeches and will remain open until 9:30 p.m.
The Candidates:
Grant Gordon
Trifon Haitas
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http://www.tdfla.ca/community-.....n-meeting/ |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:53 am Post subject: |
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| Progressive Tory wrote: |
To be successful parties should work their asses off in every riding, |
I agree with the general sentiment of your post, however the above quoted really did strike a cord.
The Tories were able defy the historic trend of by-elections punishing government in most by-elections they contested because of a tireless ground force which knocked on doors and candidates who worked their butts off.
Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean & Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup were two ridings the Tories simply should not have won but did in by-elections, heck we can even toss Vaugahn in there.
Even the close nature of the losses in both Vancouver Quadra and Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagoy by-elections show the importance of riding level organization.
Whereas the Liberals most significant victory was in Winnipeg North where they ran perhaps the most popular Liberal in Manitoba in Kevin Lamoureux to almost end up losing the seat shortly after in the next federal election.
Bob Rae's approach seems to be far too national; more concerned with a respectable % of popular support over contesting winnable seats.
The reality is that the Liberals are going to need a power-base somewhere;
If Bob Rae is their leader then Toronto Proper is about as good of a location as any, and if you want to dominate that region then you are going to need to be competitive in every riding downtown and while going hard after Toronto-Danforth could be seen as tasteless the reality is they are a party of 35 MP's sitting as the second opposition party across from a Conservative majority.
Every Seat Matters. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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| By-elections should never be taken for granted. Winnipeg North seemed to be a solid NDP riding with Judy whateverherlastnameis securing large majorities, and the Liberals won it with a popular candidate. Toronto Danforth is not as solidly NDP as Winnipeg North but the party seems to have taken it for granted. You brought up Vaughan, this was a riding that I believe the Liberals also took for granted due to Julian Fantino. It probably wasn't easy to get anyone to run against Fantino, let alone someone with a high profile, but pundits were saying Fantino could win the byelection with 10,000 vote margin and he just squeaked out a win. If the Liberals had put more effort in the riding they may have kept that seat. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Progressive Tory wrote: | | By-elections should never be taken for granted. Winnipeg North seemed to be a solid NDP riding with Judy whateverherlastnameis securing large majorities, and the Liberals won it with a popular candidate. Toronto Danforth is not as solidly NDP as Winnipeg North but the party seems to have taken it for granted. You brought up Vaughan, this was a riding that I believe the Liberals also took for granted due to Julian Fantino. It probably wasn't easy to get anyone to run against Fantino, let alone someone with a high profile, but pundits were saying Fantino could win the byelection with 10,000 vote margin and he just squeaked out a win. If the Liberals had put more effort in the riding they may have kept that seat. |
Absolutely!
The media set up Vaughan as a potential CPC rout.
It was amazing that the commentary on the by-election on Vaughan placed the Liberals as underdogs despite the fact that it was perhaps the safest non 416 - 514 Liberal seat in Canada.
Had the Liberals simply retained the riding, which is pretty common for incumbent parties they would have secured huge momentum, however instead they punted ran a stiff (who ultimately turned on the party and ran for the OPC's in October) and just inched out a loss.
Now Julian Fantino safely retained that riding in May with more then 18,000 votes.
Sooner or later if the Liberals even want to return to even Official Opposition status they are going to have to win back some of these seats and a riding like Toronto-Danforth was largely Liberal from 1993 - 2000.
I am not quite sure what the plan is under Bob Rae?
Is the goal to expand his caucus by luring 72 year old MP's into his gingerbread house with promises of shadow cabinet positions?
Sooner or later the Liberals are going to want to get an MP elected, and based on what I am seeing out of a very winnable riding in Toronto-Danforth they clearly have no idea how to do so. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Grant Gordon is actually a strong candidate who lives in TD, yet for whatever reason the Liberals didn't bother to have him nominated sooner and now it's a bit late. The NDP should win big. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Progressive Tory wrote: | | Grant Gordon is actually a strong candidate who lives in TD, yet for whatever reason the Liberals didn't bother to have him nominated sooner and now it's a bit late. The NDP should win big. |
Unless he very well known within the riding, I had never heard of him prior to seeing his name on the nomination ticket, and any information I gathered on him was from his personal site:
http://www.grantgordonliberal......html#/home
I think we may define "strong" differently, perhaps I should use the term "brand name candidate" rather then strong.
Gordon may be a hardworker but as you said, given the fact that ideally he has a month or so to win over "Jack's riding" its going to be a tall task when it shouldn't have been one.
Smitherman (for example) secures you 40% of the riding on name alone before you knock on door one, that is the type of splash the Liberals should have made. |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| I guess what I was thinking was that Gordon has a strong resume, from what I've seen. I agree with your point that he's not a strong candidate in the sense that his name will get votes. |
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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Yikes;
| Quote: | Some federal Liberals fear single-issue pro-lifers are trying to hijack their weakened party. Their fears have been stoked by the apparent re-emergence of a group calling itself Liberals for Life, which is promoting Trifon Haitas's bid to represent the party in a March 19 byelection in Toronto-Danforth.
The group has issued an "urgent message" to Liberals in the riding, urging them to support Haitas, a Greek-Canadian journalist who formerly ran for the Green party. "Trifon Haitas is the only candidate who is committed to stop the slaughter of unborn children in Canada," the electronic message states. |
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politic.....ation.html |
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| Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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Grant Gordon is the candidate, not surprising really.
I followed the vote on twitter and what was quite interesting was one tweeting supporter of Trifon Haitas, the anti-abortion candidate. This guy voted at the nomination for him but it turns out he had praised the election of the Conservative majority, criticized Iggy and Rae and had tweeted that he would not vote for Dalton McGuinty. I can't understand why someone would bother to buy a Liberal membership just to vote for an anti-abortion candidate. The party might have been right not to open candidate nominations to the general public, wonder how their leadership will be affected by these types of people. |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 10:07 am Post subject: |
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| Progressive Tory wrote: | | wonder how their leadership will be affected by these types of people. |
This is a huge problem when your base support erodes;
With the open membership system the Liberals seem to have adopted I suspect you may end up getting a pretty large group of people showing up simply to vote single issue candidates. |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| cosmostein wrote: | | Progressive Tory wrote: | | wonder how their leadership will be affected by these types of people. |
This is a huge problem when your base support erodes;
With the open membership system the Liberals seem to have adopted I suspect you may end up getting a pretty large group of people showing up simply to vote single issue candidates. |
A large number of people would not even care about voting. I don't know how many would vote just to purposely try and screw the party. If I were to decide to vote I'd pick the candidate I like best not the one who I thought would be easiest to defeat in an election. |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Progressive Tory wrote: | | cosmostein wrote: | | Progressive Tory wrote: | | wonder how their leadership will be affected by these types of people. |
This is a huge problem when your base support erodes;
With the open membership system the Liberals seem to have adopted I suspect you may end up getting a pretty large group of people showing up simply to vote single issue candidates. |
A large number of people would not even care about voting. I don't know how many would vote just to purposely try and screw the party. If I were to decide to vote I'd pick the candidate I like best not the one who I thought would be easiest to defeat in an election. |
Lets not forget that an open process ultimately landed the Alberta PC's with Ed Stelmach.
The easier you make the process the more you compromise. |
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