Kitchener-Waterloo byelection

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/hudak-blames-tsunami-of-publi...

Its omnious Hudak that Unions defend its membership from being punished for rightwing economic stupidity?

I don't get the guy, he's like serial killer who complains that his oppenant hit back and beat him up and had the gull to defend himself instead of meekly dying.

Not to mention the fucking millions his party gets from corporations and the wealthy, the mindless volunteers from rightwing churches, and he has the balls to complain about union members volunteering for the NDP.

Wasn't it Hudak who believes that corporations should be allowed to donate to political parties, but not Unions? Talk about stacking the deck in your favour.

toaster wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

I think that's a reflection as to how transparent McGuinty's attempt to, effectively, buy a parliamentary majority by inducing an opposition MPP to resign ended up being and the degree to which the attempt inflamed the electorate in K-W.

Witmer announced that it was actually her husbands cancer diagnosis that led her to resign.  So I don't fault her.

That was meant to be a comment about McGuinty, not Witmer.  No offense to the former MPP intended.  Apologies.

Hopefully seats in new uncharted areas like Brampton and K-W will provide a "beachhead" effect that gives the NDP a bump in neighbouring ridings.

janfromthebruce wrote:

Not that I want to rain on Ms. Witmer's parade but the job she was offered paid much more than the job she was leaving, and required much less "time" and "energy". And Ms. Witmer's husband is still practicing denistry although he did just sell his dental business. So I'm not quite buying her reason for stepping down to a cushy job. I think it was an opportunity she couldn't pass up.

I think she passed up lesser offers first. McGuinty seemed to be playing ostrich last fall, refusing to even meet with Andrea Horwath, much less negotiate with her. Inference: he was negotiating with Witmer first. When he had to call the legislature into session, he still refused to set up standing committees, with opposition majorities. Inference: he was still negotiating with Witmer. On Feb. 29 he gave up and set up the standing committees, but still wouldn't negotiate about the budget. Same inference. Then he had to have a budget, and Witmer was still holding out for a better offer, so he made a last-minute deal with Andrea, and then sweetened his offer to Witmer to the point that she finally bought it. Reasonable inference?

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love is free wrote:

while it's obviously wrong to jump to conclusions, the bread and butter of the ndp is precisely the strong local representative that is elected as much for personal popularity as for party affiliation.  fife seems like a natural in this sense, and my guess is (and actually, the by-election turnout indicates) that she'll be around for a while.

Though it might be more of a challenge next time around, given that the proposed new federal (and, one presumes, provincial) boundaries for K-W excise the strong-NDP zone of north Kitchener...

(Of course, that's presuming that the minority government lasts its full term.)

Ippurigakko wrote:

I hope that same thing happen in Durham!

I've been thinking of that; *are* there any potential Fife-calibre standard-bearers in Durham?

[quote=Brachina]Lets not forget the people who made it possible, the volunteers like Greco. A round of applause for them all. http://www.therecord.com/iphone/opinion/article/794432--d-amato-ndp-stalwarts-worked-hard-and-it-made-a-difference[/quote]

What an impressive volunteer!

The federal NDP should keep an eye on her as a possible candidate in 2015, don't you think?

David Young]</p> <p>[quote=Brachina]Lets not forget the people who made it possible, the volunteers like Greco. A round of applause for them all. <a href="http://www.therecord.com/iphone/opinion/article/794432--d-amato-ndp-stalwarts-worked-hard-and-it-made-a-difference[/quote">http://www.therecord.com/iphone/opinion/article/794432--d-amato-ndp-stalwarts-worked-hard-and-it-made-a-difference[/quote</a> wrote:

What an impressive volunteer!

The federal NDP should keep an eye on her as a possible candidate in 2015, don't you think?

 

Yeah, absolutely.

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felixr wrote:

The best I told you so article I've read in a long time. Congrats to K-W New Democrats! I hope Catherine Fife proves to be that awesome MP that Scott Piatowski is suggesting.

Though Piatkowski's strong-local-organization argument dodges around the NDP's fed/prov underperformance in 2011--yet the facts underlying the argument are a reason why even *I* was regarding the NDP as a potentially viable sleeper factor, 2011's results notwithstanding.

And actually, K-W isn't alone here; the NDP held real sleeper strength throughout SW Ontario through the Layton years--maybe not enough to win, but they definitely struck a note in "the heartland", more so than in the 905 and even bits of the pre-2011 416...

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It's quite easy for the poll numbers to be the same if there was no redrawing of the poll boundaries between the last general provincial election and the KW by-election; why would the local Returning Officer go out of her/his way to redraw them? There may be a few areas where substantial new housing resulted in there being too many voters in a particular poll. If that happened, the standard thing to do is to splie that individual poll inhalf and label those resulting polls 89A and 89B, rather than redraw the poll boundaries for the riding as a whole.