NDP Leadership # 103

Good news!  Cultural activist Todd Wong, aka "Toddish McWong", the founder of Gung Haggis Fat Choy (a hybrid celebration of Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year), is supporting Brian Topp.  Good to see that more and more people are standing behind Topp's call to restore tax fairness to make sure the top one percent pay their fair share.  The NDP will win by sticking with our principles!

I'm sure Nash has polls but it would be a silly time to release it with the deluge of the membership numbers about to fall, unless the poll will somehow allow her to spin those numbers advantageously, but I haven't heard any rumours to that effect either. 

I think a lot of Topp supporters would (holding their noses perhaps) rank Mulcair ahead of the other candidates because many of them are very strategic minded and don't want to elect a leader who would be lethal to the party in Quebec.

BTW: One thing no one has talked much about is whether some candidates might let it be known who their second choice is and invite their supporters to follow suit. Martin Singh has reported that he has signed up 6,000 members. What if Singh puts out word that he has Mulcair as is second choice? I have to believe that a lot of the people he has signed up in Sikh temples etc....will be heavily influenced by that.

I think the new members are the most easily swayed by who their candidate, or their candidates' endorsers, boost as a good second choice. That is because I am presuming these new sign-ups largely did so out of admiration/to support the candidate that they signed up for and they may also have a weaker history of attachment and thus be lesser informed vis à vis the other candidates.

As such, the candidates with the most new signups are probably the ones you want to target for down ballot support (if these candidates drop out though, it may be their supporters would not vote at all).

I think the effect of the Québec MPs saying Topp or Mulcair is an indication to (new) Québec members to rank either one first or second, and I think it will have influence. So in the event Mulcair drops, I would expect a bunch of his Québec support to swing to Topp, and in the event Topp drops probably the same could be said of his Québec support going to Mulcair. I think the main non-benefactor in all this is Peggy Nash, who clearly has some Québec presence.

Are final membership numbers going to be officially announced by the Party?

Before anyone spins this as "not a big deal," consider this: the Conservatives had 112,000 donors in 2008, the NDP needed big membership gains to even get into the ballpark in terms of competing with the CPC. The NDP is now probably in the ballpark. Can the new leader continue to grow the party and take it to a win? One thing is for sure, they will be starting from a good base.

We'll never raise funds like the other parties. We aren't beholden to huge corporate lobbyists. There's no money in being a New Democrat.

Funny, though. For all the money spent by the conservatives, they only increased their vote total by 1%. The liberals spent a ton and lost money. We spent less and gained more votes.

Fundraising is important, but it's not everything.

Actually that is incorrect. To have voted in the BC NDP leadership contest last year, you had to have joined the party by January 10 (I think), 2011. Your membership would have lapsed and had to have been renewed in order to be part of the 38,000 BC members eligible to vote in this contest.

Really?? Someone must have forgotten to tell Christy Clark. She is a dyed in the wool federal Liberal and she HATES the NDP with a passion and prefers to work with Harper's people.

I like to watch what the Liberals and Conservatives think about the race. If only to see what they think our weaknesses are, and only to see what they're afraid of.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/ndp-...

You have to take everything Warren Kinsella says with a HUGE grain of salt, because his job is (first and foremost) to get Liberals elected. Even the far right wing ones in BC. But I've found that when he does his Liberal soul searching, he usually raises criticisms I'd agree with as a New Democrat.

He says the thing that creates the biggest problems for Liberals and Conservatives is if we can hold that "beachhead" in Quebec. I definitely felt that Quebec was important for our party. But if it's important for pissing off the other parties, that matters to me too. :)

By that token, he said Mulcair and Topp are the only logical choices. I wouldn't agree: Ashton or Nash have solid French, and even for all the complaints I have about Dewar, his French is improving. But Topp and Mulcair are definitely the only two who have much name recognition in the press *currently*. I've been hoping that anyone else would catch fire, particularly Peggy Nash.

It just hasn't happened yet, and I'm not sure how it could happen. And if it doesn't happen, Mulcair is the biggest beneficiary.

While Hunky and Ken continue to go at it, I have a question on "legitimacy" of win.

When Jack won the leadership, on the first ballot, it was pretty clearly a solid and overwhelming win.  Not that there weren't hurt feelings and bruised egos - there always are in these contests, even the nice-NDP ones - but it was hard to come up with a compelling "but for" narative to nurture an unresolved grievance upon.

I would be very surprised if this one goes in such a clear-cut manner, so the question is how big a win is needed to keep the backbiting to a minimum?  

If the front-runner on the first ballot (Mulcair) takes it on the second or third ballot without the other contenders really forming around an ABM candidate then I don't see the legitimacy issue being raised, those that are concerned about Mulcair's perceived "centrist" streak will be on watch for deviation from orthodoxy but I'm not it would be seen as much different from what we normally do.

However, what if Nash or Dewar end up building support through subsequent ballots to pass Mulcair - can it be done WITHOUT it being seen as an ABM, or worse, and anti-Quebec outcome?  If only through the eyes of the MSM that seem ready to jump on anthing that suggests we aren't ready for prime-time.  If it's Nash as opposed to Dewar - is that better?  Or worse?  Not from a "best leader" perspective but in terms of pulling the team together once we are done?

Steve Shutt has a good point.

I still maintain that the average person, even the average member, has no strong feelings on the race. Most people I talk to like multiple candidates. Outside of the actual volunteers and a few people on Babble, I haven't met anyone who says "it has to be" any candidate. When people raise concerns about other candidates, it's always "can they win?" Not any strong hatred. If they can inspire the confidence of more than half the members, that lends at least a bit of credibility to their "winningness".

It's not who wins, or even how they win. It's how the other candidates lose. If any of the candidates adopt a scorched earth tactic, like "if you vote for my rival, you won't recognize the NDP", or "your attack on me is really an attack on all the members of Quebec", it could inflame the contest and turn soft preferences into hard limits.

I don't see that happening. But you never know with the egos in politics.

Wow, that's almost a 30% increase in BC alone. Amazin'.

Nathan might be having a very good showing.