Why ARE Green Party supporters so unquestioningly loyal to their leaders?

Uh what does blather about biomass mean?

The failure here is that the Green Party and its leader did not already address the energy issue earlier, after the BP blowout, after the Tunisian uprising. The GPC should have been front and centre on this but instead they are wasting money and resources for an advertising campaign about a 'more civil' politics. What a complete misdirection!

Our problems with energy are social/political in nature, not purely technical.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/64/feat-hothouse2.shtml

May's situation is unlike other candidates. She's the leader of a party that was supported by 1 million people and didn't come close to winning a seat. The Greens could double their vote and still fail to win a seat if their vote continues to be evenly spread out. Under FPTP, they have to concentrate on a couple of seats to get a toehold within the process.

May and the Greens might be best served explaining this FPTP conundrum to the voters in SGI. They could tell voters in SGI that eventhough almost 1 million Canadians vote for the Greens they have no representation at all in Parliament. They could add that it would be good for all of Canada if the leader of a pro-environmental party that has the votes of 1 million Canadians had a seat in Parliament to express a large body of opinion that should be heard, especially after the catastrophe in Japan.

I checked  and Adriane Carr is still a member and is going to run somewhere in BC.  This is galling for me because she blew electoral reform in BC.

She personally made the difference.  Traitors to green values should not be candidates. 

As leader, I guess it is fine for Carr to run in Saanich. But I do not think she will do as well as the last green to run there. Briony Penn (who ran as a liberal and lost because of dirty tricks from the conservative campaign and gullible ndp voters who voted for a withdrawn candidate).

Penn and Lewis (who ran as a green years earlier) are probably at least as well known in sgi as Carr and Penn is probably seen as greener too.

I think the Chretien vote splitting measure, money for partys based on votes garnered (as well as seats for votes for the larger partys), will mean that the greens are here to stay.  Harper would actually lose if the money for partys based on votes garnered was ended, because the greens would quickly run out of cash and without cash they would have no campaign.  If the party subsidy was ended, the greens would still have strong local candidates in sgi, Carr could be kicked out and May would stay on the other side of Canada and the spoiler candidates (necessary to get the cash) would end in many ridings.  I think that the spoiler candidates are worthwhile because they give someone to vote for for disaffected people who would not othewise turn up at the polls. Hopefully the ndp will have a strategy to convert spoilers voters at the next  election?  Something like, "give me your vote, and if I get elected, I will donate x amount to the green party after the election".

Because honestly, voting green is a catch 22 unless new thinking comes along.

Of course she is running. She doesnt rival May's insane level of draw on party coffers... but she is pretty far up there by any other measure.

Not to mention being the succesor in waiting. Not that she is just waiting. Such lovely prospects.

Right. Carr placed 4th, and might be in a position to do better this time.

Not bad for someone the Greens put over $100,000 per year into supporting.

And good enough to make her the favourite for succeeding May when she falls.

That is $100K per year they "invest" in Carr, outside of elections.

Lens Solution wrote:

Adrianne Carr performed reasonably well for a Green candidate in the last election and managed to get 18% of the vote in Vancouver Centre, but she still finished 4th.

Will she be able to move up this time?

I think that was her high water mark and she will be lucky to get over 10% and save her deposit this time around...still waiting to see who the NDP runs in can Centre. Will Byers try again?

Re SGI, if there is an election soon & things keep going as badly as they are in Japan now, May would do well to remind electors about who was the centre of the Linda Keen affair -- her opponent Lunn, of course -- and what they were so nonchalant about, possibility (even "remote") of failed safety pumping, very much at the heart of the disaster in Japan now. Greens were the only ones who questioned the strange goings on -- NDP easily capitulated in the end as well -- in the outrageous emergency recall of Parl. I did some blogging on it back then for GPC (eg full page at http://greenparty.ca/node/3644), which was used to differentiate the GPC from the rest, a paradigmaticc example of why such a party is needed, if only it could conduct itself better.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

I predict that May will lose and that the main reason will be that voters in the riding will have no desire to send a political operative back to her old stomping grounds in the capital.  They will vote for people who they think will represent their riding not the three million voters in other parts of the country.  That is the nature of our representative democracy system. Why should the people of Saanich elect an MP to represent the party first and all its country wide voters?  At the end of the day the voter in the booth will chose someone who they think might represent their riding even if they like the Green message.  What astounds me is how a party that has put so much energy into grass roots forms of democracy doesn't see that what May is doing is an insult to the LOCAL community.  

Not Likely. May will likely lose to Gary Lunn with the Liberals and NDP 3rd and 4rth--not necessarily in that order.

You actually believe the slight plurality that Lunn might win by will be because because people here believe he is attentive to local issues?

People will mainly vote for him because they are living the Reform-Con dream supplied to them by the media.

And from the amount of time NDP boosters spend slagging May, I'd suspect many would prefer Lunn to win than have another elected also-ran party to vie for crumbs from the right-wing media.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

Sorry for stating an opinion.  I ACTUALLY thought I was allowed to have one.  Boy am I ever naive.  Carry on explaining your incredible insight into all things political.  I kneel at the feet of your superiority.      

And I'm sorry I didn't realize I was being disrespectful simply by disagreeing with you, without irony or abuse.

I dunno. The Greens raised and spent $30,000 in my riding last election. We only have so much money. Why spend it on candidates struggling to break 10%, and not on the Carrs, Mays and Nagys (who spent $70,000. And yes, I know Nagy isn't running...).

Too bad that leap from 32% to 40%+ needed is so big when you are in a 4 party universe.

Which is why if you are serious you try to make that leap in THE riding where you have the best chance and are closest to the national media.... not the one that is best among those where you are willing to live, willing to reach out and court the local riding association, etc.

@WCG:

The question isnt raisng and spending money on the strongest candidates the GPC has.

Its draining the treasury all year round and year after year to feed the maw for May, and even Adrian Carr, regardless of whther she is actually in a posiion to be the most or almost as winnable.

Which is leaving how much money to spread around to those other stronger candidates? And how many of them are there as compared to the number there were in 2008?

IMO  May would be poised to win a seat in the H of C if she had run in the right Ottawa seat twice already.  She would be at home and there is at least as much potential in a couple of the Ottawa ridings.  Until we change our electoral system someone like her running around the country from one end to another just looks like an unseemly carpet bagger looking for voters to propel her career not people who want her as a representative of their RIDING.

Dief ran I think it was four times before getting elected in what was considered a Liberal stronghold.  He never left home and by the tine he had refined his message enough to appeal to voters in his home riding he was ready to take his message onto a national stage.  May is in such a hurry she is going nowhere. 

Northern Shoveler wrote:

IMO  May would be poised to win a seat in the H of C if she had run in the right Ottawa seat twice already.  She would be at home and there is at least as much potential in a couple of the Ottawa ridings.  Until we change our electoral system someone like her running around the country from one end to another just looks like an unseemly carpet bagger looking for voters to propel her career not people who want her as a representative of their RIDING.

Dief ran I think it was four times before getting elected in what was considered a Liberal stronghold.  He never left home and by the tine he had refined his message enough to appeal to voters in his home riding he was ready to take his message onto a national stage.  May is in such a hurry she is going nowhere. 

I think you make an interesting point.  It's hard to gain much momentum and impact in a riding (not to mention credibility) when you are constantly running around the country looking for a different riding in each election to plunk yourself down in.

If May had stayed in the same riding and run in the same place more than once, perhaps she would be farther ahead.  Most candidates for office who make more than one attempt at getting elected know that you need to build up a standing in one district/region.  You risk losing all the gains you have made when you switch to another riding.

Brian White wrote:

I said gullible for a reason. The police invistagated the last minute calls to voters urging them to vote for the withdrawn candidate and couldn't prove where they were coming from. They did NOT come from the NDP organization. ...

 

The only source to make that rdiculous suggestion, that the NDP would commit the election fraud and then spoof (fake) the caller ID to make it seem it came from their own NDP riding president!--is of course the Reform-Cons:

Quote:

The most obvious suspects would be Conservative Gary Lunn's campaign, who with no NDP candidate in the race face a united progressive vote and a tough challenge from Liberal Briony Penn.

“We didn't do it,” said Lunn's campaign co-manager Byng Giraud. “I hope nobody's thinking it's us. If they were, I'd be quite upset.”

It could be NDP people who didn't like how West was bounced from the race, NDP people who want to get the $1.95 per vote in annual funding for the party or the Green Party, he said.

http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Federal-Politics/2008/10/14/SuspiciousCall/

For the completely implausable reasons Election Canada gave for dropping the election fraud probe, see:

http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/03/20/PhoneFraudCharge/