Reporters do not just have bad hair days. They also have days when it is tough to dredge up a story. On a day when your editor or news director is counting on you for 1500 words or a two-minute video clip, you sometimes get this hollow feeling in your stomach. There is absolutely nothing new for you to report. It is time for you to become creative.
Take this speculation about NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Liberal leadership contender Kathleen Wynne. Will they or will they not? Would it be a match made in heaven? It is all fairly silly speculation.
First of all, to suggest there is some compatibility between Horwath and Wynne is quite a reach. Anyone who has tried to follow a speech by Wynne, knows that she is a long way from having any socialist tendencies. This is a person who got into politics because she objected to Premier Michael Harris consolidating Metropolitan Toronto into a single city back in the 1990s. This was something that had always been fought by the right wing politicos because it would make Toronto too powerful. Harris did it because he could not figure out Toronto’s problems—nor did he care.
But Wynne was the ideal provincial candidate for Don Valley West. They vote right wing there. New Democrats who live in the district prefer to run somewhere else. Voters there could care less about Wynne being a lesbian. Life style choices are the last thing people in Don Valley West worry about. They will complain though if you do not mow your postage-stamp lawn carefully.
But Kathleen Wynne is probably becoming quite miffed at the media for suggesting that she is left wing. Sure, compared to leadership opponent Sandra Pupatello, England’s Margaret Thatcher might have seemed left wing. And if Sandra grabs the brass ring at the Liberal leadership convention next week, she is not going to cooperate with anybody. Sandra not only wants to be Premier of Ontario but she wants to rub opponents such as Andrea Horwath and Timmy Hudak’s noses in it. Sandra takes no prisoners.
That does not give delegates to the Liberal gathering much choice. With at least a third of the ex officio delegates to the convention in her pocket, Sandra Pupatello is safe in first place on the first ballot. If just Eric Hoskins is off on the second ballot, look for Wynne to fall off and Gerard Kennedy to have a good increase. It will be the only chance for anything interesting to happen.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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